


With Plenty of Room to Grow

by blackeyedblonde



Series: Eden Verse [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Banter, Childbirth, Children, Christmas Fluff, Comfort Reading, Crowley Has a Praise Kink (Good Omens), Curtain Fic, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fanon, Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, He/Him Pronouns For Aziraphale (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Married Life, Messianic Cameo, Metaphysical Sex, Old Married Couple, Other, POV Alternating, Parenthood, Pet Names, Porn with Feelings, Pregnancy, Pregnant Crowley (Good Omens), Slice of Life, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vaginal Sex, Weddings, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27854718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: The ward around the garden has cracked and fallen, burnt out through the angel’s onset exhaustion, but there’s no living creature for a hundred kilometers who has turned an eye or ear in the direction of the little blue cottage on South Downs.“My dear,” Aziraphale says, tipping his head forward to rest against Crowley’s chest, and then can’t seem to say much more.“Blimey,” Crowley rasps, laughing a little hoarsely in spite of it all. “I think I just caught pregnant.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Eden Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039170
Comments: 59
Kudos: 175





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A year ago I wrote “This Miraculous Child” thinking it was a one-and-done solitary event wherein I’d been struck by creative lightning just for the sake of giving these two a kid and some happiness. The idea of a sequel only snuck up on me gradually this past summer, and in light of how much fun I had writing the first fic and the positive response it got, I figured we may as well go for round two. I know sequels are never quite as good as the debut work, but it's 2020 and I don't need any excuse to write indulgent soft family fic. It's medicinal. 
> 
> For honesty’s sake, I only ever watched (1) episode of the new TV series and I haven’t read the book in over ten years lol. Crowley and Aziraphale can look however you’d like to imagine, whether they resemble David and Michael or something more personal. Crowley presents masculine throughout for the most part, though I think he veers into a more comfortably fluid fashion sense once he settles in at his new home. (You still couldn’t pry tweed and button-up waistcoats out of Aziraphale’s cold dead hands, though.)
> 
> CWs: any reference to Crowley’s anatomy will use more generalized terms like hole, entrance, chest, etc. There is another semi-graphic birth scene later on in this, but it is a positive and wholesome experience with Aziraphale acting as a very present and supportive partner from start to finish. There is no serious bodily harm or emotional trauma. Crowley chooses to chest-feed for a second time and will do so in the story. The last warning is probably painfully obvious, but I’m not British, so go easy on me if you can lmao. 
> 
> *Small additional warning for part 1: When Crowley meets a new neighbor in South Downs, the elderly woman makes some uninformed Assumptions about Eden's parenthood that aren't accurate. It's a somewhat uncomfortable conversation, and I wanted to warn about it here just in case that kind of thing troubles anybody. Despite the misstep she makes, the new neighbor is quick to apologize after Crowley claps back (with some humor, I hope) and makes amends soon thereafter.

It’s just two weeks shy of Eden’s second birthday when the decision to leave greater London is no longer something neither Crowley nor Aziraphale can banish to the back of their mind as a well-intentioned thought to be casually addressed later. In fact, Aziraphale supposes they’ve overstayed far _too_ long as it is, and now bargaining for any sway in the equation—even as a pair of celestial entities—will not bow or break the ironclad will of their realtor.

“I’ve told you time and again, Mr. Fell, the suburban neighborhoods aren’t what they were when you and I were growing up,” she says into the phone, and Aziraphale already feels so flustered with this conversation that he doesn’t have time to think about her mistake in assuming he was a _child_ in the 1970s. “If it’s real space and privacy you’re after, you’ll either have to branch further out into a more rural location, or buy up one of the old crumbling castle estates and hope to heaven Dracula hasn’t taken up residence in the meantime.”  
  
“And I’ve told you money is no object, Ms. Laghari,” Aziraphale says, looking up at the ceiling as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “There must be _something_ within flyi—er, shouting distance of Soho. I’ve still got to manage the bookshop from time to time, you know. I can’t very well commute in from Cornwall on the weekly to keep my business affairs in working order, now can I?”

Aziraphale could lock up the shop and leave it unattended for the better part of a century before he even started to worry about mere dust motes settling in the place, but Ms. Laghari doesn’t need to know that much, nor does she need to know about the two-year-old time bomb they’ve been having to sling miracles around like some kind of frantic damage control squad since she was six months old. The fact of the matter is, leaving London scares Aziraphale a bit. Or, rather—taking _Crowley_ out of London is a thought that tends to keep him up at night. But now it seems they no longer have a choice in the matter.

Ms. Laghari heaves out a sigh into the receiver but gathers her patience up as Aziraphale hears a few scratches of pen stroke and then the click of a computer mouse. “There is one place,” she begins, at the same moment Aziraphale holds his breath, “...not unmanageably far from Brighton, situated on the South Downs. Stone’s throw from the sea, but it’s on the smaller side with a big wild garden, you know, and certainly hasn’t seen any reno since Prime Minister Macmillan was in office—”

“Splendid!” Aziraphale says, just as Crowley walks into the room with Eden on his hip and a soggy stuffed tiger in one hand that he sets down by the sink. “We’ll take it.” 

“You—you’ll take it?” Ms. Laghari says abruptly. “Mr. Fell, you haven’t even put in an offer.”

“We’ll take what?” Crowley blurts, golden eyes flashing as he whips around to look at Aziraphale. As if the torturous crawl of time itself hadn’t already nosedived into a standstill, Eden brightly giggles in his arms, lets out a tiny shriek, and in the very next instant there’s a real, live, 100-kilo tigress standing on the granite countertop. 

Aziraphale stares at the beast. The tigress’s amber eyes stare back and blink. He’s rather certain a million stars are born and then die again in the following half-second. “Oh dear,” he says, rather plainly. “That’s quite realistic.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s—Hell’s— _not again!_ ” Crowley snaps, smacking an open palm down on the counter like he’s leveling in court. The tigress looks back over her shoulder at him, bewildered, and then lowers herself into a crouch before leaping off the stone—straight into the open air of the flat’s polished chrome kitchen, and then lands again as a stuffed plush with black stripes and plastic resin eyes on the floor once more.

Eden shouts, “Muffy! Muffy!” as Crowley promptly shifts her over into Aziraphale’s arms and plucks the mobile phone from his hand, bringing it up to his ear without pause. 

“Sorry for the confusion, Divya,” he says, watching Aziraphale bend over to gingerly pick Muffy the tiger up off the floor. “The offer’s just been accepted this morning, can hardly believe it myself. We’ll pop in for the keys and paperwork within the week, if that’s alright? Jot it down on the calendar along with your commission fee and we’ll get it all taken care of.”

When Ms. Laghari hangs up the phone, she goes back through her daily records and notes and tries to figure out when Mssrs. Fell and Crowley put an offer in on the cottage. It takes her the better part of an hour, but eventually she finds the formal paperwork receipt under a stack of pamphlets on her desk, freshly inked with their signatures and green-lit for the purchasing process to begin. Oddly, Mr. Fell’s name is written with a flourish of what appears to be fountain pen and sapphire blue ink.

Across the city, Crowley looks up as he sets the mobile phone down and leans back against the counter. “Where is it we’re moving, angel?” he asks, watching Eden babble to herself as she bounces Muffy against Aziraphale’s chest. “Got a bit caught up in the moment.” 

“There’s a cottage not too far from Brighton,” Aziraphale says, feeling a bit lightheaded about everything that has transpired over the past ninety seconds. “On the South Downs. It’s the only thing she could find that wasn’t historical ruins or surrounded by neighbors on three sides.”

“South Downs, then, on a lark,” Crowley snorts, looking around at his flat as the houseplants tenuously begin to ponder their fate. “Guess it couldn’t be any worse than hell, now could it?” 

Aziraphale has never been there, but he’d take Crowley’s word for it. “We need room to _expand_ ,” he says. “Stretch our wings and—oh, you very well know what I meant. Heaven forbid we’re in St. James Park when Eden decides to have her imaginary friends pop in for a visit. You know we can’t stay here forever, Crowley.”

Crowley does. They both do, and have known, frankly, since it became quite clear their ineffable little Eden wasn’t as human as she initially looked. Turns out going for a cheeky afternoon outing with the pram becomes a right pain in the arse when your baby finally figures out she’s the offspring of metaphysical creatures in Harrods. It’d taken nearly a fortnight to clear that mess up, TikToks and all. 

“Do you think we’re finally slowing down, angel?” Crowley asks in a mournful tone, only half-serious, but seriously enough that it makes Aziraphale peer at him a bit queerly from the corner of one eye. “Moving off into the woebegone countryside like a couple domestics.”

“Slowing down?” Aziraphale echoes aloud, like he’d never really considered it. He hefts Eden up higher against his chest and presses a kiss into her strawberry blonde curls, wrinkling up his nose in joy when she laughs and giggles. “My dear, I think you and I are just getting started.” 

* * * 

When they walk into the realtor’s office to finalize sale paperwork and pay Ms. Laghari for her time and services, she politely tries to arrange for the partner moving company to take any and all belongings to the new address on South Downs. 

“It’ll be heavily discounted if you come on recommendation through me,” she says from the other side of her desk, eyeballing Mr. Fell in stiff tweed and his partner in the sleek charcoal suit with cropped ankles and dark sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose. The whole ensemble clashes rather jarringly with the toddler in lavender gingham dungarees playing between Mr. Crowley’s slim, Gucci-clad knees, Ms. Leghari privately decides. The monthly dry cleaning bill between the two of them must be on par with her mortgage. 

“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary, but thank you regardless,” Mr. Fell says, offering her a smile that reaches his eyes. “I think everything we’ve got should fit quite nicely into the boot of the car.” 

“What he means is that we’ve already gotten most of the heavy lifting taken care of,” Mr. Crowley amends, though his smile doesn’t move anything but his sharp mouth. “‘Preciate it, though. Kind of you to offer your _sss_ ervices on personal commission.” 

Ms. Laghari feels a prickle of sweat draw between her shoulder blades beneath her sateen blouse but doesn’t let her expression crack. There’s something inexplicable about these clients, something she wants to put a finger on but can’t quite focus on no matter how hard she tries, as if the very nature of them sitting here before her may be forgotten as early as tomorrow morning.

They’re in the middle of signing some of the legal documents when the toddler now busying herself with playing with Mr. Fell’s pocket watch where she’s perched in his lap lets out an excitable shriek that makes Ms. Laghari’s eardrums pound inside her head like subwoofers. There is a bright, instantaneous moment of what could be pain, and then suddenly she blinks and feels like she’s just fallen back into her seat, fingers and face tingling with phantom heat like she may have been singed but wasn’t. 

“I think that wraps everything up,” Mr. Fell says in a sudden hurry, straightening and stacking the paperwork before neatly setting his pen on top. Ms. Laghari doesn’t notice when Mr. Crowley slips his borrowed pen into his breast pocket because she abruptly doesn’t feel quite well. She supposes she may need her lunch hour to lay down and shut her eyes for a few minutes. 

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Ms. Laghari manages, thinking only of the motion sickness medicine in her handbag under the desk and the commission check she’ll cash at the bank this evening. She passes the house keys over, having only received them that morning via mysteriously expedited post, and sags back into her chair. “I trust you’ll be pleased with your new home on the Downs. Do let us know how the move went once you’re settled.”

When Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley are gone and her office is empty, Ms. Laghari grabs her handbag and shakily stands. On the other side of the desk, sitting neatly on the hardwood floor behind the door, is a single shard of glass. 

She picks it up and stares at it in the palm of her hand for a long moment, then turns to look out the office building’s tinted windows—the same shade of smoky blue as the remnant from the floor, as if the pane of glass had once been shattered and repaired again without her ever being any wiser.

* * *

The cottage on South Downs, from a distance, looks like something Aziraphale may have mailed on a postcard once or twice in the twentieth century. Charming, quaint in a somewhat rustic way with the daylight shining upon it like a sun-bleached seashell. The house had once been the color of a robin’s egg, though that richness has faded to a powdery blue that mimics the great chalk hills looming in the distance. 

The garden is quite large as promised, surrounded and closed in with a low stone wall covered in ivy. A trellis arches over the front gate where wild roses droop some in the afternoon heat, though fat bees are content to buzz around them and the other flowers growing in disarray all around the property. There’s even a great ash tree offering shade to the south, some wind-gnarled thing with sprawling, leafy branches that has stood against the test of time and then some. 

Crowley steps out of the driver’s side of the Bentley and then turns to unbuckle Eden from her carseat. He wrinkles his nose at the dust on the car’s paint, restores the high shine with a pointed thought, and then pushes his sunglasses up on top of his head to survey the cottage in full.

“Well,” he says after a beat as they push through the gate. “May as well see the guts of the place before we call a spade a spade, eh?”

“I thought you liked the vintage look,” Aziraphale tuts as he unlocks the peeling, whitewashed door and lets it swing inside. “I think it’s all quite charming.”

“1960s interiors were as much a mistake as those silk-covered walls in the Library of Alexandria,” Crowley laments, pulling a hand over his face with a groan as they get their first real glimpse of the front room. 

There’s a crushed blue velvet sofa and white lace curtains gone yellow with age, while gold mirrors in oblong shapes hang like strange keyholes on the walls. Beyond that, they can see an avocado green frigidaire still standing in the kitchen, old enough that it opens with a pull-lever and has a narrow icebox built into the top.

“I know a bloke who restores those things,” Crowley says offhand, nodding toward the fridge while Eden plays with the scarf loosely tied at his throat. “Bona-fide antique in today’s market. Hip young people pay hand over fist for them.”

“Well, _I_ think it’d be nice to have some projects to focus on, you know,” Aziraphale says, tugging needlessly at the cuffs of his driving coat. “Do it up the old-fashioned way and turn the place into whatever we want. It has good bones—enough to offer just a small slice of paradise while Eden grows.” 

Crowley turns and surveys the room; the cobwebs in the rafters, the old key hooks by the back door, the worn groove on the wooden floor where a thousand pairs of shoes have walked for the past hundred years, maybe longer. That’s a mere blink of an eye to him and Aziraphale, but something worth entire lifetimes to the humans they’ve lived amongst for millennia. Huh. Even as a demon, Crowley finds that while humanity sometimes sickens him, it humbles him even more often than that. 

“House?” Eden asks without warning, as clear as a bell in her tiny voice. 

“House,” Crowley answers, nodding his head in agreement. He turns and looks at Aziraphale, who is looking particularly fragile in this moment, and holds out his free hand with the palm facing upward. The silver ring there on his third finger catches just-so in the light. 

“Well,” Crowley says, when he’s got Aziraphale’s thumb pressed into the heart of his palm. “It’s not camera-ready for the cover of Britain’s Best Homes and Gardens, but I s’pose it’s home.” 

Aziraphale kisses both his partner and his daughter, smiling like the sun and sniffing a bit. “Oh, I know it’s not anything lavish or fancy just yet,” he says, gathering up the confidence in his voice once more. “But I have no small doubts that it will be.”

“What should we call it?” Crowley asks. He doesn’t know when he’d gotten into the habit of naming inanimate objects, but he guesses it might have been around the time Muffy the tiger came into the picture.

“Not a clue,” Aziraphale says simply, shrugging his shoulders. He steps up and tucks a tiny curl behind Eden’s ear with reverence, smoothing her hair back into place. “What should Papa and Daddy call our new home, dearest? You’ve got the real brains in the operation.” 

“Garden!” Eden says, reaching a hand out toward the sprawling, wild oasis she can see through the rear window beyond Crowley’s shoulder. “Go play garden, Papa.” 

Crowley and Aziraphale’s wide eyes swerve to meet at the same moment, but Crowley’s expression cracks first. 

“Too on the nose?” he says, mouth twitching.

“Quite,” Aziraphale says, blowing out a loaded breath. He turns anyway to peer into the picture of lush green for himself and can't quite stifle the smile that blooms across his face. “Out to the garden we go, indeed.”

* * *

Moving from a high-end flat in central London to a cottage on the South Downs is...an adjustment, to say the very least. 

When Aziraphale said the place had good bones, he wasn’t lying; indeed—the walls are sturdy, the water runs clean, and the old flue still seals tight to keep the nighttime draft out. There is a small family of mice living in a hole behind the old washboard in the laundry room, but they’re easy enough to convince to move on to greener pastures once the babies are old enough. 

Speaking of greener things, Crowley makes quick work of finding sunny spots around the cottage to strategically place his newly displaced houseplants. The vines and leaves poke about curiously in their new surroundings for a few days before their daily encouragement with the misting bottle resumes once more, and then they begin to tentatively flourish anew. The pothos plant at the top of the stairs soon starts winding itself down the wooden bannister, and Crowley’s so charmed with its audacious plan to escape that he lets the vines do as they please. 

Aziraphale talks a lot about the bookshop but doesn’t once disembark for Soho in their whole first month on the Downs. When he really sits down to ponder it all, he supposes he misses the routine of things and the creature comforts of quaint familiarity. Books are easy enough to move—and he has a whole shelf growing in the cottage already—, but the kindly walls of a building that have cocooned you across three centuries are harder to replace or come by, as it turns out. 

As far as Eden’s opinion of their new home goes, her burgeoning relationship with the unruly garden speaks for itself. In fact, it might even be uncanny if she took any more keenly to playing among the flowers and chipmunks and shade of the old ash tree standing sentry there near the southern corner of the stone wall. If Crowley and Aziraphale watch closely enough, they could swear everything alive moves and bends around her as if she radiated the warmth of the sun.

They’re out watching Eden play in the garden on the afternoon of her second birthday, as a matter of fact, when Crowley looks to his left at Aziraphale sipping tea from a cornflower-printed porcelain cup and says, “Do you think she’s a bit lonely, here?”

The angel sets his teacup on its saucer and then rests them both on his knee. There’s a small cake inside waiting for them, so he’s foregone any chocolate biscuits and scones for the time being. “Lonely?” he asks, eyes never once leaving their daughter as she sits among a patch of cow parsley with Muffy the tiger and small swarm of yellow butterflies.

“You know,” Crowley says, “tottering around talking to leaves and earthworms is a bit, well...” He lowers his voice a bit, nose scrunched up. “It’s a bit _unseemly,_ isn’t it?”  
  
“She’s young yet, dear,” Aziraphale answers. “You don’t seem bothered about her talking to _snakes_ , now do you?” he adds after a moment, sliding Crowley a knowing but affectionate look. “When she starts up in school she’ll meet plenty of other little ones her age. But if you’re worried about her social development, I suppose we could arrange more playdates with the children who live nearby. I just don’t know if this nebulous age is...quite right, for too much social activity with the outside world.” 

Crowley nods but still doesn’t feel like the topic is settled. Tigresses in the kitchen as an issue altogether aside, he can count the number of times they’ve taken Eden somewhere to play with other children on one hand, and it’s a sore spot if he presses on the thought too much. 

He knows very well what it’s like to be lonely, and had known it for a long time before he and Aziraphale had finally decided to throw in the towel and settle down. When you aren’t quite human, the knowledge that you’ll outlive all your friends and lovers tends to hang like a heavy fog in the back of one’s mind. 

All but one friend and lover, anyway, in Crowley’s case. And now they have a child to think of.

“We should take her out more, on walks and little things about the Downs,” Crowley says, even if Aziraphale’s agreement on that point doesn’t scratch the itch he’s feeling in a deeper part of himself. “See if we can drum up some other little brats for Eden to make mischief with.”

“You’re right,” Aziraphale sighs. “I just...worry about her ability to control things, is all. We both know she’s different from the other children.” 

That seems to be a brick wall they keep hitting no matter which way Crowley spins it, so he swallows down anything else that may have been trying to bubble up and decides to let it rest for the day. Eden’s only just turned two, he figures. They’ll have plenty of time to play catch-up once they get her trained to sit on the loo and into a place where she knows when it’s socially acceptable to bring real zoo animals to the party or not. 

Back indoors later on, they light the candle on the wee frosted cake and sing happy birthday. Eden laughs and claps her hands and watches the flame with rapture in her eyes, perched there on her high chair with a bib on over her playsuit. She doesn’t yet know how to blow out the candles, so Crowley crouches down for an impromptu demonstration.

“Watch Daddy, love,” he says, waiting until her big eyes are on him. “Let’s make a wish, eh? Think of what you want most in the whole wide world, and how much Papa and Daddy love you. Now one, two, three...out they go!” 

The smell of birthday candles lingers on the air, not too unlike the smell of burnt sulphur in the wake of one of hell’s minions. Crowley tries not to think about that as he pulls the candles from Eden’s cake and lets her dive in with her hands first. Aziraphale swipes a finger through the edge before it’s completely destroyed for a taste of buttercream, and then, having known in advance this particular pastry would be doomed before it even began, goes to the fridge to pull out a chilled chocolate torte for the two of them.

He snaps his fingers and suddenly the cottage smells like sunshine and clean linen again. Once he’s dished out a slice of dessert and two bottles of accompanying wine, he clinks his glass against Crowley’s and settles back to watch Eden smear herself from head to toe with pink icing. 

“Can you believe we’ve kept this little miracle alive for two years?” Aziraphale asks, eyes crinkling at the edges as Crowley looks up and blows out a sigh, trying to hide the quirk at the corner of his mouth. 

“Don’t call her that too often, angel, you’ll give her a complex,” Crowley murmurs. “We’ve successfully done what humans have been doing since the beginning. Couldn’t have been too bloody hard.” 

Aziraphale raises his brows in good humor, indulging in another long sip of wine. “Would you go back and change anything?” he asks softly, and this time Crowley’s eyes swivel right to his, gold on blue sapphire in the afternoon light of the kitchen. 

“No,” he says, immediately. “Nothing.”

“Me either,” Aziraphale says. 

That truth settles comfortably between them, but there’s something stuck in Crowley’s craw that he can’t quite push out—and hasn’t been able to, maybe, ever since they were in the back garden. 

He tries, but when he opens his mouth, he simply lifts his wine glass and takes another long drink. 

* * *

Crowley’s out pushing Eden’s pram down the narrow lane one morning, throwing out a word or two of caution to the toddler when she starts to run too fast in her little boots. 

“Careful, darling,” he says as they come up on the next house along their way, there at the bottom of a small hill. There’s an older woman in a large straw hat stooped over a flower bed and a little ratty-looking dog running back and forth along the white picket fence, barking its fool head off. 

“That’s puppy!” Eden says, moving along faster now. “See the puppy, Daddy!” 

“Yes, love, but we don’t pet strange puppies until we know it’s allowed,” Crowley says, jogging ahead to swiftly scoop her up into his arms. He goes back to get the pram and they toddle along the rest of the way, listening to the ugly little dog bark and bark the whole time.

“Hush up that racket, Pixie!” the older woman says at last, sticking a hand trowel into the earth with some considerable force for her age. “Hush it up! You know better than to bark at the little ones. Those are our new neighbors.” 

Crowley arches an eyebrow at that but doesn’t comment on it as they pass in front of the woman’s garden. He does make a little wave, just for appearances’ sake—wouldn’t do to put the wrong foot forward first thing, at least as far as humans go. 

“‘Lo there,” he says casually over Pixie’s barking, still holding on to Eden’s hand at a slight stoop considering their difference in height. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” 

“The best of the best,” the woman answers, rising up off her knees before going to snatch up her own charge. Pixie stops yapping immediately, gone mum in her owner’s arms as the elderly lady makes fast way for her fenceline with a row of hearty blackberry bushes between them. “My oh my, who is this beautiful little angel?” she says, and Crowley’s heart leaps into his throat before he remembers it’s just another pet name. 

“This is my daughter, Eden,” he says, even as the toddler shyly leans into his leg. “I’m, uh—Anthony, by the way,” he adds as an afterthought. “S’pose we haven’t crossed paths just yet.”

“I had half the mind to march up the hill and ring you out if you didn’t come down this way for a chat soon,” the woman says, lifting up the brim of her sun hat with one gloved hand to give Crowley a better look at her weathered features. Warm brown eyes and deep smile lines greet him, all surrounded by a frizzy halo of grey curls. He knows immediately that she lives here on the Downs alone and has for quite some time. 

“I’m Edith Charlotte Johnson-Potts Whitaker, but just Edith is quite alright,” she says, shifting her little dog over into the other arm before looking up and down the lane as if searching for something. “You seem to be missing one of your party this morning.” 

“My husband, Aziraphale, is working on some manuscripts this morning,” Crowley says, secretly pleased with how easily _husband_ rolls off his forked tongue. It’s not technically true, at least not yet, but Edith doesn’t need to know that. It also makes sussing her out at first brush a whole lot easier, depending on how her reaction goes. “Eden and I thought we’d go for a little walk to give him some quiet time in the study. Didn’t we, love?” 

Edith tips her head up just a fraction of an inch, looking Crowley over. Her eyes narrow in a way that seems she’s found something to be self-satisfied about. “I figured as much, but didn’t want to make any assumptions about the state of things, you know,” she says. “Got to be politically correct these days and all. It’s not the 20th century anymore, now is it?” 

“ _Sss-_ ertainly not,” Crowley says, flashing her a grin that’s all teeth. “The world grows gayer every day and quite frankly, darling, I think we’re better off for it.”

Edith doesn’t take the bait in the way he expected, though she does snort and vigorously nod her head. “I’d say so,” she quips, “especially with you lot adopting so many of the children from these overrun orphanages and giving them a good home. Miracles in disguise, sure enough.” She looks down at Eden again for emphasis, smiling. “You and your husband did right by this little one here.” 

That’s the part that throws Crowley off his game just a hair. 

“Not to discredit the humanitarian merits of a loving adoption, but we hardly did anything of the sort,” he says, looking down at the top of Eden’s strawberry blonde head. “This one’s all mine.” 

“O-oh,” Edith says, slowly falling back a step. She looks between Eden and Crowley once, then twice, and then her mouth purses in thought. “I suppose she does favor you quite a bit, doesn’t she? Her mummy must’ve been fair, too.” 

“There was never any mummy in the equation,” Crowley says straightaway, both brows raised above the rim of his sunglasses now. “I carried her for nine grueling months and then popped her right out in the bath myself like a Kinder Surprise.” 

That hangs in the cool morning air between them for a long moment. Edith stoops to set Pixie back down on the ground, and Crowley _dares_ the rat dog to start barking again.

“Puppy sad, Daddy,” Eden declares, pointing at the subdued Pixie. 

“Yes, darling,” he answers, still keeping Edith held steady in his line of sight. “Pixie seems to have remembered her manners.” 

“Apologies for my—oh, you know us doddering old people,” Edith stammers a bit clumsily, not quite looking at him. “Politically correct but never politically correct enough, sad to say.” She stands there in front of her blackberry bushes and wrings her hands a few turns before looking back up at him, defeated but not soured.

“You two enjoy this lovely day, and I’ll be seeing you,” she says, offering a thin smile. “Tell your dear husband I hope he joins you next time you’re out for a walk.”

“Until then,” Crowley says coolly in farewell, though he’s content to leave this picture just as he found it for now. Eden waves goodbye as they turn round and stroll back towards home, and that’s the last coherent thought Crowley really devotes to Edith Charlotte Johnson-Potts Whitaker for the next two days, until he goes out to water his angel wing begonias on Thursday morning and finds a small basket lined with cloth sitting on the stoop in the front garden. 

There’s a note sticking out of the side that he palms before peeking inside at an assortment of freshly homemade biscuits, scones, and two jars of blackberry jam. He immediately knows who it’s from, but opens the short letter and glances over it anyway.

**_To my new neighbors, with plenty of room to grow. -E.J.W._ **

Crowley stares at the looping cursive for a long time, at least until two songbirds flit across the yard and land together in the thorny rosebush at the corner of the garden. Then he rolls the words around in his head like polished marbles, though they don’t have much to do at all with Edith.

Aziraphale is gone to Soho on this Thursday morning in particular, for the first time since they moved to the South Downs as a matter of fact. He’d promised to be home by late afternoon, but Crowley suddenly wishes he were here right now. He feels like there’s something they need to discuss, quite urgently, if the fluttered beating in his chest is any indicator. 

Begonias forgotten, he hurriedly brings the basket of baked goods inside and drops it off on the kitchen table before reaching for his mobile. 

Aziraphale picks up on the first ring, already sounding harried. “What’s wrong?” he says. “Crowley? Are you both alright!?” 

“...so, I’ve been thinking,” Crowley begins, slowly. “About what we spoke about on Eden’s birthday.” 

“Mercy, I thought something had happened,” Aziraphale breathes out, and Crowley can practically see him standing there in the shop with his hand clasped over his heart. “Why on earth did you need to call about that? I was going to be home again in just a few hours; we could’ve discussed it then without you giving me onset cardiac palpitations.” 

“Yes, well, I just wanted to talk it over,” Crowley clarifies, “uhm, right f— _eff_ ing now. Because it’s been eating at me for weeks and I didn’t realize why ‘til just this very moment.” He slowly sinks down into one of the old kitchen chairs, sending up some silent prayer to nobody in particular that Eden stays down for her mid-morning nap. 

Aziraphale is deathly quiet on the other end of the line, and finally Crowley breaks. “When I said she needed a playmate, I didn’t even realize—that we, could, well. You know. Do the ol’ one-two, and source merchandise internally.” 

He can practically hear Aziraphale’s blink. “The old ‘one-two’?” 

Crowley presses his fingers into his eye sockets and tips his head back. “I’m _saying_ , angel, that you could knock me up again so the poor kid could have a brother or a sister, or something. At least whatever the bloody hell came out would be more on par with her own existence as a—whatever she is, which is certainly-not-human-after-all!”

“Something? _Something._ ” Aziraphale’s voice cracks in his throat. “Oh, Lord.”

“Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t at least thought about it, living out here in this quaint little country setup,” Crowley beseeches. “The sickening mummy blog posts practically write themselves. Two and a half kids and the white picket fence, all that usual swill—we could have our own show on the BBC.” 

That changes things rather quickly. “Are you unhappy here, in South Downs?” Aziraphale asks in a grave voice, suddenly sounding like he’s gone pale in the face. “Crowley, be honest with me now.”  
  
“I’m perfectly content, angel,” Crowley says right away. “That’s not what this is about. I’m happy here, even if we’re still adjusting to a—a change, which we needed. I just…” 

He trails off, eyes wavering somewhere on the ceiling, and this time Aziraphale has to reel him back in. “You just what, dear?” the angel asks. “There’s nothing you need to hide from me, of all people. We have to talk with each other about these things; honest communication is key in a successful partnership, you know that.” 

Crowley croaks out a tiny little laugh, right knee rapidly shaking side to side in a nervous habit. “I just...well. I look at her, and watch her play, and I—I think. About _things_ , you know. Sometimes. Occasionally.” He pauses to chew his lower lip, trying to find the right words. “I think we could try again, for another, is all I’m saying. There. How’s that for honesty hour?”

Aziraphale lets out a low, decompressing breath. “The old one-two, indeed,” he sighs at last. “I think I need a cup of tea.” 

“You’re killing me,” Crowley says emphatically. “I’m dying, angel. For fuck’s sake, I need you to say something relevant before I collapse in a pillar of salt.”

Aziraphale’s words start tumbling out of him in a rush. “I mean, I’ve thought about it, privately, from time to time, Crowley, but do you think…” he says, grappling for purchase on what he wants to say. “I mean, do you think it would be _wise_ , trying to recreate Eden’s, er—miraculous conception? When we’re still a bit unsure of who, or what, she is exactly?” 

“I don’t see how it was all that miraculous, angel, honestly,” Crowley snorts, holding a weary hand over his eyes. “We rolled around in the bed, you put your willy in me, our stuff sloshed around, ineffable shit happens.” 

“A baby happened, dear, just so we’re on the same page,” Aziraphale says. “We created a life. A life unlike anything the earth’s ever seen before, at that. How much hubris do you think it’d take to do that again, but on purpose this time?” 

“My modus operandi is fueled by hubris and has been since I crawled into the first garden,” Crowley says flatly. “And you know the Son his one and only sacrificial self came down here with a supreme meat pizza, Aziraphale, and gave us his blessing. If that’s not a green light on the matter, then I don’t know what is.”

“I recall it very well,” the angel says after a quiet moment, long enough for them both to remember the day Eden was born. And then, “Let’s agree to ruminate on this and revisit it later when I’m home again. I...must admit I’m a little shocked that you’d even entertain the idea. Gobsmacked, even.” 

Crowley stiffens at that. “Why does it surprise you?” 

“This is just the first I’ve heard of it, is all, in the two years we’ve had Eden,” Aziraphale answers. “If I’d known earlier, I suppose it wouldn’t be as much of a shock to the system. But I need to think about this. We _both_ do, Crowley.”  
  
“Maybe,” Crowley says with a sniff. “Or maybe I’ve already made up my mind.”

“Promise me.” 

“Ngh,” Crowley sighs. “I’ll see you tonight.” 

“Until then, my love,” Aziraphale says, warmly as ever. “Give our little one a kiss from her Papa.” 

When he hangs up, Crowley flips his mobile onto the table and runs a hand back through his hair. He’s accidentally let it go a bit wild since they arrived in South Downs, and it’s starting to twist up into soft curls again as it grows. He thinks he wants to keep it this way for a while, just to try something different. No harm done in that, especially since Aziraphale’s started in on a beard over the past fortnight or so. 

The angel could miracle a perfect one into place with a snap of his fingers, but he insists on growing the damn thing himself. It’s still a bit patchy, yet, but Crowley doesn’t mention anything about it. He rather likes it, even if Aziraphale’s kisses are much more bristly than they ever used to be. 

For now, Crowley reaches into the basket Edith sent over and pulls out a chocolate-dipped shortbread biscuit, biting into it viciously. The dark chocolate melts like French butter on his tongue, and he tries to stifle a moan but lets it reverberate through him anyway. 

“Fuck, that’s good,” he hisses, cramming another cookie into his mouth. “Satan bless fair trade cocoa and old biddies.” 

He makes a mental note to send thanks over to Edith, and then remembers she lives just down the lane a-ways and he can thank her himself, like something out of a quaint little storybook. Entirely antithetical to usual demonic procedure, but this is Crowley’s BBC-special life now, he supposes. 

Gone native and domestic—and as it turns out, still with plenty of room to grow.

* * *

Crowley’s favorite place in the cottage, bar none, is the lofted bedroom he and Aziraphale share. A narrow stairway leads them up to the second floor, and there nestled below the raw wooden beams holding the place together is a nook of a room with nothing but their bed, a bureau, two bedside lamps, Crowley’s prized floor-length mirror, and a wide bay window facing toward the distant sea. 

The room is entirely unlike the sleek interior of their old shared flat and yet no less attractive in its own peculiar way. At night Crowley turns on the reading lamps draped in sheer scarves and lets the golden glow cast warm shadows across the rafters—shadows he doesn’t need to fear as much anymore, especially now that Aziraphale is always somewhere near. 

Their duvet and sheets are slate grey and sinfully soft, all goose down and fine Egyptian cotton. There’d been no compromise or corner-cutting there, as far as Crowley was concerned. If he was going to sleep in a faded blue little cottage house in South Downs, he was going to do it on 800 thread count sheets at a minimum, thank you kindly, with tartan or florals fully blacklisted into the next eternity. 

Even though bathing isn’t an essential to either of them, they tend to indulge in hot baths before bedtime by force of habit. It’s soothing and part of a grounding routine now that their days orbit around the whims of a toddler, and Crowley has an array of salts and fine oils he keeps there by the tub in little glass bottles and ceramic pots. Aziraphale insists he doesn’t have any use for such things, but occasionally Crowley will coax him into the wide clawfoot tub so they can soak together—the very same Victorian tub from his old flat, brought along for the journey in a way that wasn’t exactly physically possible, but which certainly happened nonetheless. 

Aziraphale had gone to wash up after his return from Soho and now slips into the empty side of the bed to Crowley’s right smelling of rich cedar and bergamot. Eden has been slumbering in her little cot in the attic bedroom down the short hall for a good hour or more at least and the house around them is still and quiet. If there’s a rainstorm the baby may wake and clamber into bed to snuggle in between them, but for now there’s only Aziraphale’s warmth radiating through his flannel pyjamas and the angel’s clear, peachy aura sliding along Crowley’s senses like warmed satin. 

He’s shirtless himself, only wearing silk boxers and the silver band on his finger. “You smell divine,” Crowley murmurs, reaching over to swipe a thumb over the whiskers on Aziraphale’s jaw before he leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Almost good enough to eat.” 

“There’s an idea,” Aziraphale quips, though he sweetly turns his head to kiss Crowley full on the mouth. “Mm, I could say the same about you, darling.” 

Aziraphale’s lips stray to Crowley’s jawline and then the softness of his throat, stubble pleasantly scratching along the way. He’s merely exploring for now, pressing a soft kiss to the beat of Crowley’s needless pulse below his ear, but when the angel leans in closer and places a warm hand on Crowley’s tight stomach that pulse makes a very decided move southward. 

“Listen, about—about what we were discussing earlier on the phone,” Crowley manages to rasp out, even as his body squirms closer to Aziraphale. “I think—fucking hell, I _know_ —what it is I want. And I’m not changing my bloody mind about wanting another baby.”

“You aren’t?” Aziraphale suddenly blurts, pulling back enough so he can look Crowley in the eye. “Wait. You—you do?” 

Crowley wants to crawl out of his skin and wither into dust before they have this conversation, but he meets the angel’s gaze head-on so Aziraphale will see the truth there. He hopes everything he feels is written on his face; the things he yearns for, in the darkened little chamber of his demonic bleeding heart.

Aziraphale must find something to soothe his nerves there, but it clearly isn’t enough. “Even if we were both on the same page about this, Crowley, there remains some finer print we haven’t parsed through yet,” he says, reaching to take one of Crowley’s hands in his own. “I think you’re moving much too quickly and not considering all the options.” 

“What options would we _need?_ ” Crowley asks, eyebrows climbing high on his forehead. “I know I have a penchant for vanity at times, but I swear I wasn’t planning on putting in a custom catalogue order for a designer genome baby.” 

“I mean,” Aziraphale offers patiently, “that I could potentially carry the pregnancy this time, if you were averse to going through it again for any reason whatsoever. In fact, we could even arrange for a surroga—”

“No!” Crowley nearly shouts, startling Aziraphale enough to jump. “I—no. No surrogate.”

Crowley holds a hand up to his mouth in wake of the outburst, somewhat unnerved himself. They stare at each other for a long, strange moment, and then the demon lets out a shaky breath. 

“Look, I—I know either one of us could always flip-flop the old plumbing, but I rather like…having the baby so close to me, you see,” he admits, long line of his throat bobbing some in place. “Where I can feel them.”

When Aziraphale stays quiet, Crowley bites into his bottom lip and drops his gaze into the soft grey bedding between them. Their fingers are still tangled together, and it makes his stomach clench, feeling the words he’s about to say bubble up from somewhere so deep and terribly vulnerable.

“I like carrying your child, Aziraphale,” he whispers. “Feeling the light you put inside me move and—and grow. It makes me feel like I have a...purpose, again.” _A pure one_ , he can’t bring himself to say. _A closeness to—_

“Oh,” Aziraphale says. And then, soft enough for Crowley to pillow his head and lie down upon, “Oh, my. You gorgeous, tender-hearted serpent.”  
  
“Don’t patronise me, angel,” Crowley hisses, guts twisting into coiled knots. “Not about something like this.”

“How could you ever think I was patronising you?” Aziraphale asks. He looks genuinely hurt for a moment, but then moves even closer, gently cupping his partner’s face in one hand. “I marvel every day at the goodness to be found in your boundless heart, darling. I only wish I knew before how you felt.”  
  
“Yes, well, the topic doesn’t often come up at the dinner table while we’re feeding the baby peas and mash, now does it?” Crowley says, feeling entirely too raw and open under Aziraphale’s steady gaze. “I didn’t want you to think I was entertaining the idea of something rash and... _irresponsible_ .”  
  
Aziraphale laughs at that, gleeful crow’s feet pulling at the corners of his eyes. “You, of all people!” he snorts. “Doing something irresponsible? I wouldn’t dare imagine it.” 

“You know this is different,” Crowley mumbles. “We both know children aren’t some whim to be taken lightly.”  
  
“No, they aren’t,” Aziraphale agrees, gently running the pad of his thumb over the contour of Crowley’s cheekbone. “But, we have the room now, and the resources, and the time. I haven’t for one moment doubted the love in our hearts for our Eden, so I suppose we’re as ready as we’d ever need to be.” He pauses to reflect on his own words and then nods, confirming it again. “Just so long as it’s what we genuinely, truly wanted.”

“And _do_ you want this, angel?” Crowley breathes out, heart high in his throat. “Again. With me?” 

Aziraphale shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “All I ever needed to hear was that it’s what you’d ask of me.”  
  
“Well, when do we get started, then?” Crowley asks, mouth gone a bit dry. He tries for a laugh but it comes out part-way strangled. “Guess I’d better send a memo to my bits and bobs that it’s time to come out of hibernation for the war effort.” 

“I think we’ll know when the time is right,” Aziraphale says sagely, tipping his head forward to press a kiss to Crowley’s brow and then another at the corner of his eye, where his lips linger when he next speaks. “There’s no reason to rush or worry. All good things happen in their own due time.” 

Crowley feels loose-limbed with physical relief, sagging there where he leans into Aziraphale’s familiar warmth. “Okay, alright,” he mumbles. “But maybe I just wanted you to shag me stupid right now, anyway.” 

Aziraphale snaps the fingers on his free hand, bathing them over in darkness only brightened by pale moonlight drifting in through the window. “I would love nothing more,” he says, voice gone an octave lower than usual. It makes Crowley’s stomach muscles reflexively clench. 

“You’re far too overdressed,” he says, and when he snaps his own fingers they’re both suddenly quite naked under the heavy duvet, and one of the bedside lamps has inexplicably turned itself back on.

“Ah,” Aziraphale hums affectionately, looking at Crowley silhouetted by the golden light shining behind him. “I always forget you don’t like making love in the dark.” 

“And _you_ always forget that I don’t like _making love_ at-all,” Crowley sniffs as they hunker down under the duvet, even as Aziraphale cradles the back of his head like something precious and draws him close. In a world of little white lies, that one is Crowley's favorite.

“Such a shame, too,” Aziraphale tuts, fine fingers teasing around the heated pulse already beating between Crowley’s thighs until the demon shudders and gasps. “You’re so very good at it.”

And maybe it’s just that easy for Crowley to cling to Aziraphale and let him slowly sink into his warmth up to the hilt until their quivering bellies are flush, pressed chest to chest there in the loft’s soft light. It’s the simplest thing in the world to dig his fingers into Aziraphale’s shoulders where two ivory wings would sprout free, wrap both legs around his angel’s hips and make room in his serpent’s heart for what might be hope. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I think we all know this Eden series is kind of super duper camp-y, but...I simply can’t resist. After a rough and stressful year, it’s been fun to unwind with something dramatic and silly. (AND SOFT) 
> 
> There’s a sex scene in this part, but it’s not -the- sex scene if you know what I mean. I thought this fic would be a two-parter but surprise, it’s gonna be a three-parter (potentially a four-parter if I lose my mind at some point between now and Christmas). Any pregnancy and baby-havin’ stuff comes in the next update. Until then!

Aziraphale has a theory. 

Well—a working hypothesis, technically, since collecting sound data from his two-year-old is something of a trial even on the best and brightest of days. But it’s a personal theory he mulls over nonetheless. 

He keeps a ledger in his old roll top desk and makes a notation for each day of Eden’s life, long or short, big or small: one for each date on the calendar since the hour she first opened her eyes and drew breath into her tiny lungs. He has not missed a single day; there have now been 756 of them.

On the 757th day, when Crowley is lightly dozing on the settee after luncheon, Aziraphale takes Eden into his arms and whispers, “Let’s go out into the garden and fly for a spell, shall we darling?” 

“Flying” in the Crowley-Fell household could mean one of a few things, if you want to get particular about it, but today Aziraphale is making it into a game. He sheds his jacket and waistcoat until he’s down to his trousers and linen shirt, sleeves rolled up over his forearms. Eden is happy to be hoisted up into her Papa’s arms again and lets out a peal of laughter when he lifts her even higher to sit on his shoulders.

“Now hold out your arms like this,” Aziraphale instructs, holding his own out to the side like aeroplane wings for reference, “and close your eyes very tight—if Papa runs fast enough and you think of being a songbird very hard, we may get enough air under your wings to lift off and take to the sky. Are you ready?” 

“Ready Papa,” Eden’s tiny voice confirms, sounding so sweet and small as she holds her arms aloft. Aziraphale reaches up to steady her, slipping his fingers through the loops on her favorite dungarees so she can’t slip backwards. 

“Alright, dearest, here we go!” he says—and then is off at a jog through the garden, not once tripping or sliding through the gravel and wildflowers because angels have the sound feet of an old testament mule. He runs faster, and then somehow faster again, until they’re running out of garden wall and then there’s only the wide open hills sprawling ahead beyond the eastern gate. 

“Show Papa how you can fly, Eden,” Aziraphale calls up to her over the wind passing them by. “Like a bird, just like a bird!”

They go down one hill and crest over the next, Eden’s laughter ringing like bells through the air. She keeps her arms dutifully held out even as Aziraphale eventually circles back around to the cottage and trudges through the open gate, feeling quite winded and somewhat silly for thinking this may have worked. 

He spies Crowley leaning in the back doorway, barefoot with his arms crossed over his chest, sunglasses nowhere to be found. The demon’s head is cocked to one side, though the grin on his face makes dimples deepen on both cheeks.

“What have you two been up to out here without me?” he asks. “Chasing rabbits and howling at the moon?”

“Oh, nothing in particular,” Aziraphale says, making a dismissive sort of expression as he dusts his trouser legs off. “Just getting some fresh air in the garden while you were having a lie-down.” 

“Fly just like a bird, Daddy,” Eden clarifies, matter-of-factly where she’s still perched on the angel’s shoulders. “Papa showed me.” 

“He did, did he,” Crowley says, stepping down onto the stone path to meet them. Without his heeled boots, Crowley is just a scant inch shorter than Eden from her vantage point in the air. He tips his face up for a wet toddler kiss, and having gotten one, he asks, “Where are your wee wings? Birds need those to fly, you know.”

“I don’t think it quite worked this time,” Aziraphale says a bit breathily. “But perhaps we’ll get lucky the next time we try, hmm, darling?” He reaches up to squeeze one of Eden’s little hands, reassuring. “It just takes some due diligence and practice, that’s all.” 

Once Aziraphale has let their daughter down and watched her scamper off across the garden to greet an orange and white cat sitting perched on the stone wall, he turns to Crowley with a more grim expression.

“I know it’s silly—” he starts to say, but Crowley waves him off. 

“S’not, really,” he says. “She’s only just turned two, and it took _you_ nearly two millennia to manifest wine that didn’t taste like it was aged in a cattle trough. If there are wings there, they’ll come out when they’re ready.” 

Aziraphale nods, though he gnaws along his bottom lip as he and Crowley both keep an eye on the cat while it bumps its head into Eden’s tiny hand. “You’re right. I know there’s no use in questioning any great and ineffable plan, but sometimes I...worry,” he says before pausing for a moment. “I don’t want her to feel like she’s at some sort of physical disadvantage, given her parentage.” 

Crowley keeps his gaze level on their daughter and the cat when he next speaks. “You wouldn’t think different of her either way,” he says knowingly, before his golden eyes slowly swivel to Aziraphale. “You’ve never treated me any less than an equal despite what I am—or rather, what I’m not. I’d think the same applies to our kid.” 

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale says, reaching up to scratch at the whiskers on his cheek, “I think we knew that much before she was even born. I loved Eden before I knew anything more than her grace.” 

Crowley smiles, slipping two fingers back around into one of Aziraphale’s trouser pockets before gently squeezing his bum. “See, that’s why I’m letting you knock me up a second time,” he says, leaning in to leave a smart peck on the angel’s cheek. “ _Ye of little faith, why art thou afraid?_ She’ll be soaring around here in no time. You won’t even be able to get her to come down for supper.” 

“You really think that?” Aziraphale asks, gazing at Crowley just to be sure. And then, more quietly but assuredly, “I think you should quote scripture to me more often.” 

“You like?” Crowley says, waggling his eyebrows a bit. He lowers his voice again, lips almost grazing the shell of Aziraphale’s ear: _“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.”_ His voice changes, dropping into something stranger and deeper, more ancient, and he recites verse in a language only Aziraphale knows.

“Oh, you silver-tongued devil,” the angel rasps, cheeks turning a brilliant shade of pink. He looks between Eden and Crowley and then pointedly back at Crowley. “If this innocent child wasn’t out here I’d bend you over the garden wall and ravage you like a—oh-ho! Madame Johnson-Potts Whitaker, what a pleasant surprise to have a visitor call upon us on this beautiful afternoon.” 

Crowley turns and looks over his shoulder at the older woman approaching as she comes down the hill with a casserole dish covered in tin foil. He tries not to visibly deflate at the interruption, but his shoulders may droop a little on their own accord. The nearby pansies tremble and hold on to each other in trepidation. 

“Just Edith is perfectly fine, Mr. Fell,” Edith says, finally having chugged up over the small gulley and toward the garden wall. The cat leaps off at her approach and lopes away to sit under a bush, where it watches with jade green eyes until it grows bored and begins licking itself. “Nice to finally catch you outside and meet the whole family in person, you know, now that I’ve crossed paths with Anthony and dear Eden.”

“Well then, if I’m to call you Edith,” Aziraphale starts, “I must insist on you calling me—uhm.” He turns around to look at Crowley with a strangled sort of expression and hisses. “What does the A.Z. stand for, again?” 

“Aubergine Zealot,” Crowley says without missing a beat, and Aziraphale looks like he’s about to pull a flaming sword out of his trouser pocket for half a second before whipping back around to greet their neighbor with a genial smile. 

“Aziraphale,” the angel says simply, reaching out to take her hand over the garden wall while Eden tries to clamber up without much success. He carefully sets the toddler there on the topmost stone before accepting the milk glass casserole dish, gingerly holding it with both hands like it’s going to implode at any given moment. 

“Aziraphale Fell, then?” Edith says, brows raising in earnest surprise. “My, that’s certainly something.”  
  
“My father was a bit of a redundant man,” Aziraphale says grimly, and Crowley lets out a snort of laughter behind him as he walks up to take the casserole dish, casually balancing it against one bony hip.

“How d’you do, Edith,” he says, winking at her with one reptilian eye she can’t seem to see too clearly without her glasses. “We appreciate the basket of goodies you left, Aziraphale said your blackberry jam was some of the best nosh he’s had since the seventeenth centu—”

“ —seventeenth annual celebratory confectionery faire, in Milford, Delaware, of all places on this beautiful earth,” Aziraphale cuts in, nodding for emphasis. “Those Americans really do know how to jar their jams and jellies. Truly, a work of art.” 

“Do they really?” Edith tuts, looking skeptical. “I bet none as good as mine, though.”  
  
“Certainly not,” Aziraphale agrees, blissfully telling the truth for the first time since Edith walked up. “Our little Eden here enjoyed it on a crumpet, didn’t you darl— _ah!_ ” 

Eden topples off the chest-high wall headfirst in her little sandals and then lands, perfectly upright on both feet, in the garden without a single bump or a scratch to behold. She laughs and clasps her hands together in glee, grey eyes bright. “I jump just like kitty, Papa!” 

Aziraphale is still gaping at her when Edith remarks, “She’s a hardy little thing, isn’t she? Seems like all three of mine grew up with a concussion or broken bone every other month, it’s a right wonder any of them survived to see adulthood. You two ought to put this child in tumbling classes.” 

“There’s an idea,” Crowley says, peeling back the edge of foil on the covered dish to take a wary look inside. “Say, Edith, no pressure, but how do you feel about babysitting? On the off chance I ever get my _husband_ here to take me on a date.” 

Aziraphale and Edith open their mouths at the same exact moment. 

“Now see here, dear, I don’t think that’s the best idea rig—”

“Oh, but I’d love to!” Edith crows, reaching up to clutch at her crochet cardigan. “I do miss the little ones, you know—it’s rare the grandkids ever come out to see grammy now that they’re older and off doing their own business. I still have all their toys and things, of course.”

She looks so hopeful and eager that Aziraphale doesn’t have the heart to strike the idea down, though he does plan to have a few choice words with Crowley later.

“We don’t want to put any burden on you, madam, considering we’re still so new to the area,” Aziraphale says. “Eden can be, uh—well, she can be something of a handful at times. Even Anthony and I have trouble keeping up with her.” 

Edith waves him off with a scoff. “I raised three boys,” she says. “You think I haven’t seen it all? Think again, lads. I’ve seen things that would make the devil himself blush.” 

“Is that so?” Crowley asks curiously, reaching up to tap two fingers against his mouth. “Like what, exactly?” 

The old woman gets a bug-eyed look like she’s about to wind up and let them know, it perfect exactness, what horrors she saw in the trenches of teenhood—but then there’s a loud clap of thunder overhead, and suddenly a gale seems to rush in from the southern sea when the sky had been clear only seconds before.

“We’ll catch up with you another time, darling,” Aziraphale calls, gathering Eden up into his arms as Edith turns tail and quickly begins waddling up the path to her house on the hill. “Thank you again for the charitable homemade meal!” 

As soon as they’re inside and tracking water and mud into the kitchen, the rain mysteriously stops almost as soon as it began. Crowley glares at the footprints on the clean floor until they rethink their own existence, and then sets the casserole dish down on the table with a _thunk_.

“Shepherd’s pie,” he says distractedly, and then catches Aziraphale’s gaze from the corner of his eye. “Funny little rain shower, that.” 

“Ineffable,” Aziraphale says, looking out the rear window as the sun begins to shine down in the garden once more. “Simply no explaining it.” 

“I think it’d be good for us all, taking some time for ourselves considering our future _plans_ ,” Crowley says pointedly, tipping his chin up while water drips off the ringlets plastered to his temples. “If anything out of the ordinary happens, you and I both know Edith could easily be...persuaded...uh, to forget. I don’t see an issue with it, angel, honestly.” 

“Tell me what would happen if Muffy the tigress decides to make a surprise appearance in Edith’s sitting room while she goes to put the kettle on,” Aziraphale says, busying himself with undoing the buckles on Eden’s sandals and tidying her up before dinner. “Do _you_ want to clean that mess up, Crowley? Even without filling out the necessary paperwork, I don’t think putting an elderly woman back together is any simple task.” 

Crowley shrugs. “More miraculous things have happened.” 

“You really are keen on toeing the line, aren’t you?” Aziraphale asks in a huff. “And _husband?_ Husband. When was it we had an ordained marriage in the eyes of the Lord, because I seem to have misplaced that particular memory.” 

This time Crowley does squirm a bit, making the water on his clothes and skin evaporate instantaneously into steam. “Look,” he says, “it was just easier at the time to feed her that bit, okay? I could say ‘partner’ to some of these old people and they’d go around telling the town we solve murder mysteries like Sherlock and Watson. I wanted the situation to be cry _sss_ tal clear.”

“And yet you refuse to take my hand in lawfully wedded marriage,” Aziraphale says, resting two fists on his hips. “Even after a child and a ring symbolizing my intentions, and now with the intent to expand our family, _Crowley_ —” 

“I haven’t written any bloody thing off, alright!” Crowley snaps. Eden jumps a bit at that, eyes gone big and glassy, and he immediately lowers his voice while Aziraphale pets her hair in calm, soothing strokes. 

“Sorry, love, Daddy forgot we’re not supposed to shout in the house,” Crowley says, pushing a hand back through his hair before smiling down at her. “Do you want to try some shepherd’s pie? Miss Edith and Pixie made it special just for you.” 

When Eden is busy pushing her supper around her plate with a Peter Rabbit spoon and Muffy sitting to her right, Aziraphale braces his elbows there on the kitchen table and heaves out a great sigh. “Well?” he asks, more softly this time. “Should we talk about this another time, or am I wasting my breath.” 

“I’m working up to it, angel,” Crowley says, drumming his fingers on his finely muscled belly where he’s slouched in his chair. Despite any and all attempts over the past few weeks to commission his uterus back into action, his plumbing still hasn’t caught on to the new game plan as of yet. Crowley’s checked and re-checked all the internal specifics twice or thrice just to be sure everything’s in working order, and even though he’s fit as a fiddle for what counts as a body that’s been 37 years old since Christ walked out of his tomb on resurrection Sunday, there’s still no signs of a baby.

“All things in good time,” he murmurs to himself, just a touch under his breath. Crowley doesn’t really know which it applies to more, but Aziraphale only nods solemnly and takes that as his answer.

“All things in good time,” the angel repeats, the furrow between his brows softening a bit. “I think I ought to embroider that onto a bit of cloth and hang it somewhere in this house as our new calling card.” 

“Good time, Papa,” Eden says mildly around a mouthful of buttery pastry, adding in her own necessary input. “You too, Daddy.” 

Crowley spins the silver band on his left ring finger and sighs. “I know, love,” he says, thinking some about wishes and promises. “I know.” 

* * *

Having the garden has really been something of a blessing for everyone, really, if Aziraphale cracks right down to it. As the summer fades and begins to drift toward autumn, they spend the last of the warmest days outdoors nearly every chance they get. 

Eden and Crowley both roam around barefoot most of the time, the former following hedgehogs as they forage under the hawthorn bushes and eagerly chasing lumpy toads that always seem to be just out of reach; the latter taken to wearing embroidered linen shifts in rich colors and a straw sun hat that he would swear straight up and down never once touched his head if anybody at the fashionable menswear shops in London were to ask. 

It suits Crowley in a strange way, Aziraphale thinks to himself—this natural, easygoing pace where the only wiles and temptations to be found are encouraging housewives to overspend at the grocery in town, or when the local radio station only plays Led Zeppelin’s entire discography one Thursday in September for no real reason at all. 

Certainly nothing worth thwarting, anyway, Aziraphale notes, considering their two-year-old daughter needs most of the thwarting on a daily basis. That poses enough of a healthy challenge in itself, and he doesn’t think he’d prefer it any other way.

The ledger he keeps on Eden’s development grows week by week, month by month, and still there’s not even a hint of a feather to be found. She’s manifested butterflies made out of bubble soap, banished every tin of artisanal anchovies from the cottage, and changed her hair from strawberry blonde to violet and then back again—but always with both feet firmly planted on the ground. 

Aziraphale wonders if demonic and angelic phenotypes cancel each other out somehow, or if Eden had simply been their greatest and final act of achieving neutral equilibrium after six thousand years of playing cat and mouse. The child isn’t _entirely_ human, he knows, but she was made using human-shaped vessels in a very human act of passion. Perhaps that was enough to tip the scales in favor of similarity by proxy. 

And so she plays, grows, and learns—every day, with boundless joy and optimism. Aziraphale sometimes doesn’t know how he went this long without stopping long enough to marvel at such an incredible thing, but maybe all first-time parents say that when a wanted and loved child brings newfound light into their life. 

Under Eden’s fast feet and Crowley’s meticulous hands, the garden flourishes even when it should be withering at the height of autumn. Aziraphale begins to worry that the neighbors may catch on if he forgets to keep the facade in place, but no passerby ever mentions the patch of sunflowers taller than the cottage or seems to notice ripe berries hanging from thriving vines. Maybe the magic in their little oasis is only visible to their eyes, like a mirage or a slice of another universe preserved here within stone walls. 

Whatever the case, it’s good. Their long days outdoors are made even better by early evenings and crackling fires in the hearth, tea and freshly-baked biscuits and stories told to Eden until she drifts off on her little cot and Crowley and Aziraphale have nothing but an abundance of nightfall and each other to revel in.

Quite frankly, they fuck with what _may_ be complete and total reckless abandon.

Crowley is so insatiable that Aziraphale sometimes has difficulty keeping up with him, even if his immortal libido and stamina has no real capping point. Sometimes he simply wants a cup of tea and to read a few pages of a blessed book, but apparently there’s no time for that when there is a baby that needs making. 

“What did we do right the first effing time?” Crowley hisses one evening, busy grinding his hips down on Aziraphale’s cock while he grips the back of the old mahogany settee they’re balanced on until it threatens to splinter. The springs in the cushions beneath them groan in agony and Aziraphale holds onto Crowley’s thighs for dear holy life. 

“Well, darling, it’s not—ah! _mercy_ —it’s not every day the world nearly ends, you know,” Aziraphale gasps as Crowley sinks down to the hilt and clenches around him like a heated vice. “I don’t know if you’ve read up on the human process of conception, but sometimes there are—blockages, you understand. Things that interrupt...a natural fertilization.” 

“Like what?” Crowley rasps. “Last I checked my eggs and tubes and all that were clear for launch. The first time you knocked me up I swear I hadn’t spared my uterus a bloody thought in a decade at least.” 

He bounces in Aziraphale’s lap with even more vigor, and the poor settee rattles like a wooden horse cart on an old Roman road. 

“Stress and anxiousness can affect pregnancy, for one thing,” Aziraphale says, tipping his head back to expose the pale line of this throat. “I think you’ve worked yourself up into a lather far too soon, dear. We’ve hardly been trying for more than a season.” 

Crowley tangles his fingers in Aziraphale’s curls and messily licks up over his Adam’s apple, gently clawing his way to a kiss that feels like a wildfire between the angel’s beard and his own panted breath. 

“Some of these humans can just _look_ at a cock and drop a dozen babies like bird eggs,” he says, nipping the words there at the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth. “You’re telling me all the power of heaven and hell between us can’t muster enough fertility to make just one? I thought you had more faith in your own faculties than that, angel.” 

Aziraphale is the one growling now, fingertips digging into Crowley’s hips until bruises form like tender lilacs. “You would question my potency?” he says, thrusting his hips up hard enough that all the wind whooshes out of Crowley’s lungs like a slashed tire. He speaks again in low grunts against Crowley’s collarbone, each word punctuated by another rough thrust. “Let the power of _His—Holy—Light—compel—you!_ ” 

He sheaths himself to the root in Crowley’s silken heat and tips over into the white-out oblivion of release. There are a few long moments of eternity where Aziraphale only sees the turning wheel of the vast universe expanding outward at a billion light years a second, and then he’s come right back to himself, in his human vessel in the South Downs cottage, listening to the soft bleating sound that falls from Crowley’s mouth as he pulses and clenches and shakes apart in Aziraphale’s lap. 

“Angel,” Crowley whispers, curls fallen in disarray all around his face. “Angel, angel.” 

“Shh, pet, I’m here,” Aziraphale says, reaching up to smooth Crowley’s hair back even as his cock twitches deep within him. “Are you alright?” 

“Can feel you in m’belly,” Crowley slurs, pressing a long-fingered hand over his lower abdomen. “Right here.” 

“I don’t think that’s anatomically possible, but I’m glad you feel duly satisfied for the time being,” Aziraphale murmurs, leaving a soft peck on his lover’s chin as his hands move to trace invisible runes up and down Crowley’s back. “I’m a little flustered, myself. Goodness gracious.” 

Crowley wraps his arms around his angel’s neck and holds onto him, simply breathing. The firelight throws shadows across the persian rug and Aziraphale is endlessly grateful he soundproofed the door to Eden’s little bedroom tonight. 

“Would you like to tidy up and go on to bed, or stay down here for a while longer,” Aziraphale murmurs into the crook between Crowley’s neck and shoulder. 

“Stay here,” Crowley says, weakly clenching around Aziraphale’s softening cock still hilted within him. “Inside me.” 

Aziraphale sighs, though it’s not much of a put-off sound. “Very well,” he says, standing with the sort of strength not many mortal men would possess, balancing Crowley’s bottom with one hand while he pulls a hideous tufted afghan off the back of the settee with the other. When he settles back down and reclines in front of the fire with Crowley still wrapped around him, he pulls the afghan over them both and tucks the demon’s head against his shoulder. It’s not the best fit, given their respective heights, but it works out alright in the end. 

“We may have to do this all week,” Crowley mumbles, jaw cracking with a yawn. “If we’re to believe a human cycle is worth a toss in this situation, I’m apparently in the ovulation window.” 

Aziraphale groans, though he kisses the side of Crowley’s nose. “All _week?_ You’re like a cat in heat.” 

“S’right,” Crowley confirms. “And I won’t shut up until I have kittens.”

“Kittens?” Aziraphale says, snorting softly as his eyes watch the fire.

“Well, maybe snake-kittens,” Crowley corrects. “Snittens, as it were. With wee little angel wings, too; Eden would be positively beside herself.” 

“I think you’re already getting ahead of yourself, dear,” Aziraphale says, chuckling a bit. “We were trying for one and suddenly you want a whole litter.” 

“I’ll take all that I can get from you, angel,” Crowley says, moaning softly when that makes Aziraphale’s cock stir some again. He wiggles his hips just a little, sighing in relief when the fit feels just right. 

“You’ll likely be the death of me one day, you know,” Aziraphale rasps out, rising up so he can lay Crowley down on the settee and fuck into him properly, hitching the demon’s ankles up high around his waist. “But not before I fill you to the utter brim again. Is that what you want?” 

“Yesss,” Crowley hisses, holding Aziraphale flush against him while the angel grinds into his body so agonizingly slow, cockhead pressing into that tender spot that makes the stars dance in front of Crowley’s eyes.

The night wears on like that, with soft sighs and gentle crackling from the fire. Outside, winter descends upon South Downs like an unraveling quilt pulled down from the attic, though the frost doesn’t dare touch a finger upon anything green in the back garden of the pale blue cottage.

* * *

On the second-to-last week before Christmas, an epiphany goes off like a struck gong in Crowley’s head one morning over breakfast. 

“We ought to decorate this place, really do it up nice for our first year,” he says, sipping at a black coffee while Aziraphale dabs some porridge from Eden’s cheek. “I thought you would’ve decked the halls by now, angel—what’s this freakish role reversal we’re going through?” 

“You’re not typically the jolly type, are you?” Aziraphale says knowingly, though the corners of his eyes crinkle as he winks and lets Eden dive back into her porridge. “I suppose I thought I’d sit back and suss out the situation, see if going domestic would give you more of an inclination toward the festive.” He smiles, then, chuffed to bits. “I’m rather pleased to see it has.” 

“Me, _festive?_ ” Crowley says in disbelief, looking a bit deranged for a moment with his wild halo of curls still in disarray after waking up. “Fat chance. I’m merely thinking it’d be best not to pull a Scrooge and scare off the neighbors first thing, is all. Imagine if word got ‘round we were a couple of homosexual atheists.” 

Aziraphale blanches some at that, though his mouth wavers against the rim of his teacup when he brings it to his lips. “Certainly not _atheists_ ,” he murmurs, brow pinching together in vague consternation. “No, no, that wouldn’t do…” 

“We’ll go into town and cut down a perfectly good tree, find some bits and baubles and shiny things somewhere to festoon it like we’re disillusioned victims of capitalism,” Crowley suggests. He mulls that over for a moment, and then says, “Or, I could just snap my fingers and it’ll all appear in the sitting room like something out of a catalogue that costs seventeen quid.” 

“That’s not as fun for little Eden, you know,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley looks scandalized at the thought. “I think she’d enjoy the traditional aspect of it, even if she’s still young yet. It’s good for their development at this age.”

“You’re right, angel,” Crowley mutters, rubbing a hand around his chin while he thinks. He takes another swig of strong coffee and then muses aloud, “How are we to bring a whole bloody tree home with just the Bentley?” 

* * * 

As it turns out, the Bentley looks rather dashing with a six-foot balsam lashed to the roof there at the front of the Christmas tree nursery. 

“If I’d have known this would draw a crowd, I would’ve written the whole ordeal off entirely,” Crowley says wretchedly as he opens his hand to accept the paper cup of hot chocolate Aziraphale passes him. He stares down into the steaming liquid and blows out a sigh, glancing over at where Eden’s bundled up and strapped into her pram, wide eyes still roving over the bright, colorful lights strung around. “Is this what I’m reduced to, angel? A roadside attraction wearing Gucci cashmere and Italian leather. I bet their grandparents weren’t even alive when I bought that car.” 

“They don’t give a toss about you, dear,” Aziraphale says reassuringly, taking the cup back to sip at the cocoa himself. “I have to admit, the Bentley does look handsomely festive.” 

Strangers are lined up in their vests and wellies, waiting to take a photo with the Bentley like it’s a prop gag set up in an amusement park. Crowley’s nearly turned the muddy puddles they’re standing around into quicksand at least three times in the past ten minutes, but Aziraphale keeps talking him down off the edge of doing anything rash. 

“Just let Eden enjoy herself for a little while longer,” he says, nodding toward the toddler. The plastic nativity scene she’s been watching intently has only just come to life a fraction of a second ago, but the people taking selfies with the car don’t seem to have noticed just yet. “We’re having such a nice family outing, really.” 

“If there’s even ONE scratch on the paint,” Crowley says sullenly, muttering the rest under his breath before a shrill scream draws his attention back over to the scene unfolding nearby. “Oi, look at that,” he says. “The camel’s just eaten a bit of that lady’s hair.” 

“W—what?” Aziraphale sputters, turning around just as the very-live and very much-winged nativity angel falls from the rafters of the makeshift stable in a flurry of feathers and white sheet. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no.” 

Eden laughs in glee as the animated lambs bound through the crowd and the camel with a mouthful of hair bellows and then rears back to spit when somebody tries to grab it. Three wise men all stand up with their urns of frankincense and myrrh, confused, and look between each other as Mary gathers up a haloed baby Jesus and steals off somewhere between the fir trees with him at a run.

“Right then,” Crowley says gleefully, grinning down at the toddler. “That’s our cue to go, poppet. Excellent work.” 

Once they’re loaded and buckled back into the Bentley, Crowley starts back off down the road with a roar and Aziraphale waves a pointed hand through the air as an afterthought. Behind them, the chaos at the Christmas tree farm abruptly halts as the braying donkey and charging camels all quite suddenly drop to the ground again, nothing more than hollow plastic.

“That,” the angel says exasperatedly, “was quite the scene.” 

“I’ll say,” Crowley says. “Best nativity I’ve seen in two millennia.” 

“Chrimmas tree!” Eden adds in, buckled into her seat with Muffy sitting alongside for the ride. 

Aziraphale purses his lips and looks meaningfully over at Crowley. “I cannot believe we’re trying for another. Do you hear me? The camel _ate_ that woman’s _hair_ , Crowley.” 

“That’s not on Eden, you can’t trust camels in general,” Crowley murmurs, though he cheerfully pops an unlabeled 8-track into the tape deck. Freddie Mercury’s voice instantly fills the car, singing, _The moon and stars seem awful cold and bright, let’s hope the snow will make this Christmas right…_

“I think she’s starting to take after me, y’know,” Crowley adds after a moment, drumming his fingers on the wheel. When Aziraphale makes a dour face, he says, “She’ll grow into her boots in no time, angel, honestly. They don’t call it the terrible twos for nothing.” 

“Lord be with us,” Aziraphale says, long-suffering. Crowley only grins.

 _Thank God it’s Christmas_ , Freddie croons, again and again, the whole way back home.

* * *

Crowley approaches the notion of decorating their new dwelling for the winter holidays as something of a personal challenge to be attacked and conquered without mercy.

The tree goes up the night they bring it home, of course—garlanded with gold and silver tinsel and a colorful array of mercury glass baubles that were instructed, quite clearly, not to fall and break or otherwise endure a different wrath. There is no angel at the top of the fragrant balsam, though one of Eden’s tyrannosaurus rex action figures is lashed up there with a bit of ribbon and tinsel. 

(“The dinosaurs died for mankind’s big oil sins, and you don’t see humans celebrating a national holiday in their honor, now do you?” Crowley had said as he waved the t-rex through the air for emphasis. “Petrol may as well be the blood of Christ.”) 

Aziraphale goes to Soho the next morning to check in on the shop and pick up an arriving shipment from Macedonia, and when he returns home that evening the cottage has been completely transformed by the beginnings of a heavy winter snowfall, among quite a few other things. 

There is a great evergreen wreath on the front door and sparkling icicle lights hanging from the eaves of the cottage, mysteriously not plugged into any power source. The front curtains are open to show off the mid-century credenza in the sitting room adorned with more boughs of holly and garland and wee bottlebrush trees, with a handsome menorah presiding over it all. 

Aziraphale walks in and sets his satchel down on the bench by the door, caught off guard by the pre-lit garland and red ribbon winding up the stair banister that leads to the loft. There’s even a Christmas throw pillow perched on the settee.

“Oh my,” he says, rooted to the spot, gazing around the cottage in wonder. “You’ve really outdone yourself, dear.” 

Crowley whisks out of the kitchen smelling rather pleasantly like pine and cedar woodsmoke, wearing head-to-toe black and a pair of jarringly bright red Nordic Christmas socks. “I’ve already had to explain to Edith that your side of the family is Jewish, so don’t forget,” he says, leaning in to peck Aziraphale on the lips. 

The demon leans back to study Aziraphale’s expression. “You look like you did that time I convinced you to try live octopus,” Crowley says, arching a brow. “Is it too much tinsel? Tell me the truth.” 

“No, I absolutely love it,” Aziraphale says, taking Crowley’s hands with the lights twinkling like stars in his eyes. “What does Eden think?” 

As if on cue, Eden comes around the corner from the kitchen at a run with Muffy held by the paw. “Papa!” she says, jumping into Aziraphale’s arms when he leans down to catch her. 

“Think she egged me on a bit, honestly,” Crowley says, pulling a slightly guilty face. He reaches up and strokes Eden’s hair where she’s sandwiched between himself and Aziraphale. “What do you think, love? Did you have a good time helping Daddy put up the holiday decorations?” 

“S’magic, Daddy,” Eden says, and then spots the snow coming down outside over Aziraphale’s shoulder with wide, grey eyes. “What’s that?” 

“It’s snowing quite a bit, isn’t it,” Aziraphale says, turning with her to look out the window. “You’ve seen snow before, darling. But maybe you don’t remember.” 

“Snow,” Eden says with awe in her tiny voice. She turns Muffy around so that she can see, too. “We go play?” 

“Ah, well, I don’t know if we have time before nightfall,” Aziraphale starts, but Crowley only silently nods and winks in his peripheral vision. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go out for a few minutes before suppertime, hm? It’s very cold, Eden—but dry enough to play in, I think.” 

Once she’s dressed in her mittens and coat, Eden runs out into the back garden and spins and dances in her toddler way through the small flurries. It’s not exactly the most graceful thing to watch, but it’s certainly a moment full of pure, childlike wonder. As the snow falls faster and begins piling up in little drifts on the shrubbery and stone wall, the magic in Eden’s eyes only grows; the icicle lights and the sparkling ice crystals seem to have her in some kind of trance.

“I envy her sometimes, you know,” Crowley says from where he and Aziraphale are sitting on the low bench by the small lily pond, now frosted over. “Experiencing everything for the first time as a child. When we were thrown into the middle ground, we were already influenced and jaded by the Powers that Be. We had a mission, as a means to some bloody end. We couldn’t ever just... _be_.” 

“We were granted a lot of foresight to avoid the suffering of being born into humanity,” Aziraphale says, dropping his head into a nod. “But also deprived the beauty of experiencing it anew with the pureness of genuine curiosity.” 

Crowley’s eyes are on their daughter, watching her run and play in the falling snow. “I think having her is the closest we’ve come to it, really,” he says, before tipping his head to gaze at the side of Aziraphale’s face. “To think in six thousand years we’d only really begun to scratch the surface—from Eden to Eden.”

Aziraphale lets out a soft laugh that makes steam cloud upon the cold air. “Humbling to think about, isn’t it?” he asks, spreading his hands over both corduroy-clad thighs. “I know deep within my being, Crowley, that having Eden was a gift. With utmost certainty. The best ones are always unexpected.” 

That settles between them for a spell, a mutually acknowledged truth they don’t often discuss aloud. Crowley says thinking too much about His ineffable chessboard gives him migraines, but Aziraphale knows better. They both know, deep down, that Eden was no fluke or meaningless accident. 

“Don’t envy her, dear,” Aziraphale says, reaching over to squeeze Crowley’s hand. “You’ve been given the blessing of bringing a life into this world, and then the grace of watching it fill with light.” 

Crowley’s mouth draws into a thin line as his throat works in place, though he nods. “Don’t go off and make me too sentimental, angel,” he rasps. “We’ve still got to make dinner and put this child to bed.” 

When they both look up to search for the child in question, she’s nowhere to be found in sight. 

“Eden,” Aziraphale calls, standing and scanning around the garden. “It’s time to come in for your supper, darling. It’s getting too dark out to play.”

There’s no answer or any telltale giggles or rustles in the bushes, so both angel and demon stand and immediately part ways to begin the recovery operation. The snow has fallen fast and thick enough to coat most of the ground in a thin layer of white, but any footprints seem to have already been covered up. 

“Eden, you’d better come out before Muffy eats up all your pudding,” Crowley warns, bending at the waist to look under the old potting table. “You know strawberries and cream are her favorites.” 

They’ve nearly made it to the back wall of the garden when Aziraphale curses in the deepening twilight and says, “Oh, damn it to _hell_ —let there be light!” A golden orb appears in his right hand, like a crystal ball filled with benevolent fire. Crowley really wishes he hadn’t looked, because he can see the panic beginning to rise on the angel’s face.

His own eyes are better suited to nocturnal activities, though hunting down a rogue two-year-old was never one of those until now. He rounds a persimmon tree still clinging on to its fiery autumnal foliage and promptly stops dead in his tracks, gaze thrown up to where Eden is perched high on the eastern corner of the wall. 

She’s simply standing there, unharmed, though Crowley has no idea how she climbed six feet through a thick swatch of dying ivy.

“‘Ello Daddy,” she says, waving. “I can fly like a birdy.” 

“Can you, then?” Crowley says, fisting his hands on his hips in mild exasperation. “That’s all well and good, madam, but you had me and your Papa worried sick, running off like that. What on earth are you doing up there?”

When Eden doesn’t answer, Crowley sighs and turns to cup a hand around his mouth. “I’ve got her, angel!” he shouts. “Over here. We’re just fine and dandy.” 

“Thank goodness!” Aziraphale’s voice answers as he jogs from the other side of the garden, orb of light leading the way. “Young lady,” he huffs, “you and I are going to have a little chat later about gallivanting off without telling Papa or Daddy where you—” 

“When did you teach her to make snow angels?” Crowley asks abruptly, staring at the vague shape of their daughter’s small body in the shallow snow just a meter away. Now that Aziraphale has brought his light, the imprints where her arms ought to be seem to even have articulated feathers outstretched. “Damn, that’s quite good, isn’t it?” 

“I didn’t teach her,” Aziraphale croaks, and then takes Crowley by the shoulder in an iron grip. “Oh my _God_. Look.” 

When Crowley next looks up at Eden, she’s smiling down at them with her arms widely outstretched again, just like Aziraphale taught her. This time, though, there are an additional pair of dusky grey wings that extend out twice as far, snowflakes melting as soon as they touch down on the soft feathers.

“I can fly,” she says again, crouching down into a determined squat. “Watch!” 

Crowley is still rooted to the spot, positively bewildered by what he’s seeing. He never quite understood what humans meant when they said time screeches to a standstill halt in extraordinary times of epiphany or crisis—until now. Everything seems to happen in slow motion, like his arms are made of lead and Eden is a thousand kilometers away instead of just a few short steps.

In the end, she leaps from the top stone of the wall and simply flutters to the ground like a fledgling songbird, unharmed, then folds her downy wings a bit haphazardly where they’ve burst through the back of her coat. 

“Ta-da!” she announces, clapping her hands. “I did it, Papa!” 

Aziraphale’s ball of light falls to the ground like a mere stone, thudding against the hard earth between his shoes. 

“You did,” he whispers. And then again, with more feeling, “You did it, Eden! My perfect little bird!” 

He scoops her up right then and there and spins her around in a circle, laughing and crying without knowing where one begins and the other ends. “We’re so proud of you, darling,” Aziraphale says, touching his forehead to Eden’s for a nose kiss. “And what beautiful wings you have, as grey and lovely as your eyes.” 

Crowley has to feel them for himself before he can truly believe it. He touches the edge of a feather, then the delicate wing joint, and finally the warm skin around the place where the appendage juts from his daughter’s body. The wings are indistinguishable from his own or Aziraphale’s, though not quite developed enough for full flight. 

“It makes sense,” he croaks, resting his forehead against Eden’s little shoulder while his racing thoughts slow to something manageable. “You’re still so little. You’re only two and a half. Just a baby. A baby angel demon child. Bloody Mary, I need a drink.” 

The snow gathers in their hair and eyelashes as the family of three stands in the eastern corner of the garden until full darkness finally drapes itself over South Downs. Words are passed between them all, excitable words and gently stern words, words of love and delight and joy.

Eventually, Aziraphale gathers up his light in one hand, and then he and Crowley walk back through the snow toward the familiar golden windows of their home with their daughter skipping along between them, dove-grey wings nowhere to be found.

* * *

The twelve days of Christmas turn into ten, and then six, then three, and suddenly it’s eleven minutes until midnight on Christmas Eve and Crowley is a little bit drunk on eggnog, but not drunk enough to not know his whose-its and what-fors. 

He and Aziraphale are slumped on the crushed velvet settee in the sitting room, pulled closer to the fire in the hearth so they can bask in the pleasant heat with the decorated balsam looming somewhere behind them. The wood crackles and pops and never burns down to ash, miraculously enough. Crowley thinks the same bundle of logs have been stacked in the grate since sometime in mid-October at least.

“What do you want for Christmas, angel?” he asks, lips pressed to the rim of his eggnog glass. He’s still not pregnant, _yet_ , so it’s fine. Just peachy. “More than any’thin. If you say world peace or some impossible abstract horseshit like that, I’ll flick your ear. S’got to be something tangible.” 

Aziraphale drains the last swig of his glass and sets it to the side instead of refilling it with nog or rum both. “I just want you and Eden to be safe and happy, my love,” he slurs, though the emotional intent in his words is clear as a crystal bell. “That’s all I could ask for. But you knew that already, didn’t you? Of course you did.” 

“There’s not a dead sea scroll or somethin’ burning a hole in your celestial eBay cart?” Crowley asks, hoping to wheedle something out of Aziraphale. Anything worth giving, if he can manage it by tomorrow morning. The starburst clock behind them ticks ever-closer to midnight, and there’s only silence mingling with the hearth as Aziraphale thinks. 

“Well,” he says at long last. “I suppose I could always use some new wool socks. The ones they make in Peru are the best, you know, but the bloody import tax the Royal Post slaps on them is highway robbery.” That calls for another two fingers of rum in the bottom of his glass, which he knocks back without much fanfare. “Savages.” 

Crowley draws in a tight breath, willing himself not to scream or stand up and walk out into the snow for an impromptu flight to South America this very instant. The hand holding his glass drops into his lap, defeated, and that’s when he sees the silver band on his finger glint in the light of the fire. 

Oh, right. He'd been meaning to get to that.

“We should tie the knot,” he says abruptly, turning toward Aziraphale. “Officially. In the late spring, next year, when the back garden is its greenest. Right here on the Downs.” 

Aziraphale snorts out a laugh and passes a weary hand over his eyes. “You’ve had a bit too much to drink,” he says, waving his hand to miracle away the eggnog and bottle of rum. “I’m cutting us off.” 

“I’m serious, angel,” Crowley says, forcing the alcohol in his bloodstream to evaporate within two seconds. “Look at me.” When Aziraphale turns and looks, Crowley blinks and wets his bottom lip, wondering, briefly, how you’re supposed to re-proprose when you’ve already been proposed to three or four times in the past and kept putting it off for next Tuesday.

“It doesn’t—you know it doesn’t need to be anything highstreet,” Crowley tries, feeling words bubble up out of him like he’s a shaken soda pop. “ _I_ won’t be wearing white, of course, but you can if you want, since it suits you an’ all, because when the fuck have we ever done anything traditional? Eden can wear her little dungarees and flowers braided into her hair. Right there in the garden, angel, with nobody but us if that’s what you want.” 

Crowley pauses, swallows, and tries to ignore the fact that his face feels like it's been set ablaze. “What _do_ you want?” he manages to say. “S’pose that’s important to ask.”

“You look so lovely when you blush,” Aziraphale says, reaching up to hold Crowley’s face in one hand. If his eyes get any softer and warmer, Crowley may melt into a pile of infernal goop right here on the settee. 

“I asked you a question,” he chokes out. 

Aziraphale’s eyes and expression never once waver. “I want a wedding in late spring, when the garden is its greenest,” he says, gently. “Right here on the Downs. Eden can wear flowers in her hair, and I’ll wear white, because we’ve never been traditional about anything, have we?” 

It’s just then that the clock decides to strike midnight and welcome Christmas in with open arms, but neither Aziraphale nor Crowley are particularly fussed with the numbers. In fact, Crowley is only concerned with leaning in and taking Aziraphale by the chin, pressing an answering smile onto his angel’s mouth.

“It’s a date, then,” Crowley says, feeling lighter than he’s felt in a long time, even if he hadn’t really known there was any weight shackled to him at all. 

“What about my socks?” Aziraphale asks, though he reaches up to tuck Crowley’s hair behind one ear, not doing a very good job at hiding his cheeky smile.

“They’re right here, you poncy git,” Crowley murmurs, pulling a gift-wrapped parcel from behind his back. “Woven alpaca wool, the best money can buy.” 

The socks fall to the floor as Aziraphale draws Crowley into his arms and then pulls him down onto the settee, out of view of the Christmas tree. The handsome balsam twinkles nonetheless, lights flickering in the dark like a wink in the night.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am on twitter if anybody would just like to chill and vibe there. My account is currently locked, but it's @honkforhankcon if you'd like to send a follow request. It did start as a HankCon-oriented fandom account, but has now strayed in several different directions. Feel free to mention your handle in a comment if you leave one so I know who is who :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ineffable weddings, metaphysical lovin’, and birth happens from here on out. I should warn you that our immortal couple struggles with infertility-ish concerns throughout the first half of this chapter, and it wears on Crowley more intimately than Aziraphale as they try to reason with this unforeseen obstacle and cope. But, as we already know—the heartache doesn’t last forever. 
> 
> Crowley’s opting for another home birth; if you already read “This Miraculous Child,” you’ll know that the experience is semi-graphic in the sense that it’s somewhat detailed, but the entire event is portrayed in a very positive, supportive, and non-traumatic light. I know nitty gritty realism is lacking, but this is meant to be comfort reading material for the most part. When you’re a demon with an Angel of the Lord for a husband you can freestyle and still come out ok 😅
> 
> I appreciate you guys reading this and being kind when it’s so largely based on my own bastardization of fanon, lol. Hope you enjoy!

Winter thaws bit by bit, melting away until the snow drifts are soggy puddles gathered into pools that herald in the promise of spring’s arrival on the Downs.

The warren of wild rabbits slowly return to their grazing on the hillside, noses and ears twitching as they go about their days in the nippish cold. The little beasts had chased each other to and fro all through January and February to breed, and now that March is upon them the doe rabbits have slowed down and begun to return underground to pad their grass nests with fur pulled from their soft underbellies. 

Crowley wouldn’t ever dare admit that he envies them, these cotton-arsed vermin, but perhaps he does. Privately. The thought remains tucked away in some secret corner of his mind where nobody or nothing but potentially the prying fingers of God—and only on a good day, at that—could decipher how much he mourns for the second child he can’t seem to make. 

Oh, they’ve tried. Tirelessly. He’s done every trick in the human book short of dialing up a fertility doctor and perhaps a few from some more occult sources as well, but after long months of standing on his head in earnest effort the miraculous stuff that gave them Eden doesn’t seem to want to take a second time. 

Aziraphale tries not to bring it up if he can help it, and nowadays if the topic arises he gets a bit drawn in the face and makes much ado about taking off his spectacles to polish them with the little cloth he keeps in his breast pocket. At this point, Crowley can’t blame him, really; for all his miracles and holy healings, the angel doesn’t know how to fix this situation, either. The answer evades them like something painful and broken-off without reason, festering beneath the surface like a poorly scabbed wound. 

Crowley is tempted to liken it to the dawning realization of learning he’d fallen away from Grace, though even _that_ hadn’t been without a tangible inciting factor or two. You play heavenly defector games, you win heavenly defector prizes. But the reasoning behind this sudden _in_ ability in their world of extreme abilities is...well. Infuriatingly inexplicable, to say the least.

“It must’ve been something about that day,” Aziraphale says late one evening, sitting up in bed with only his dressing gown on. He closes his book with intent and sets it on the bedside table by the burning lamp. Crowley is curled there beside him, naked as a lark, close enough that he could press his face into the soft junction between the angel’s hip and thigh. 

“What about it,” he says, eyes closed, trying not to sound as listless as he tends to feel about all this these days.

“The Apocalypse only comes around once, you know,” Aziraphale says. “Or it _should_. The whole world was poised for its ending, but in the eleventh hour a technicality flips the switch.” He snaps his fingers for effect, making Crowley crack open an eye. “But who’s to say it was all instantaneous change at even a cellular level? Perhaps in the vacuum of sudden ineffability, the celestial bonds on our corporations were wrought asunder.” 

“Did anybody ever explicitly _say_ our kind walk around automatically sterile?” Crowley says, sneaking a hand up to slip inside Aziraphale’s dressing gown. He doesn’t do anything saucy—yet. Though the simple act of pressing his palm to Aziraphale’s warm stomach and chest seems to calm him. “I don’t remember that tidbit going around in the owner’s manual when we first got dropped into the Garden. Before I came along, even the humans didn’t know they could bump uglies and make babies.” 

A slight crease draws between Aziraphale’s brows as he reaches up to stroke his beard, thinking. “Well, we have no reason to believe otherwise,” he says. “Have you ever been pregnant or gotten anybody pregnant in the six thousand years before we had Eden? Dear boy, I can assure you that I most certainly have _not_.”

There _was_ that one time in the 70s when a gogo dancer at Studio 54 boldly invited Crowley to snort two lines of coke and stuff six jade eggs up their nether regions, but he doesn’t think that counts in the grand scheme of things. 

“Ah, no,” Crowley says, tracing a fingertip around Aziraphale’s chest. “Not that I can recall.”

“Not that you can _recall?_ ” Aziraphale says, brow furrowing again. 

“I mean, I’ve dabbled in all manners of kinky nonsense, angel, but I don’t think making babies was ever involved,” Crowley says, lightly pinching the bud of Aziraphale’s nipple and earning a soft little gasp for his efforts. “You’d be quite proud to know you were the first and only to ever knock me up, wouldn’t you.” 

Aziraphale’s expression breaks into his special brand of bashful preening, then. “Oh, well, I suppose I could take credit where it’s due,” he says, playfully coiling a curl of Crowley’s hair around his finger. “But back to my point, dear; perhaps we simply never had the ability until things nearly ended. That was a singular moment in the expanse of all history, just one window that was open and closed within the blink of an eye. And we somehow got lucky enough to earn our little Eden out of it.” 

Crowley pulls his hand back, slowly, leaving Aziraphale’s dressing gown open to the sternum. He lies there, unconvinced, but doesn’t know if there’s any further use in arguing about it. Maybe Aziraphale is right; maybe they only ever had that one narrow shot in God’s great big game of chess. But if he thinks in any more grandiose metaphors tonight, he figures his brain matter may start leaking out of his ears. 

“I don’t think we should give up, even if that’s the case,” Crowley says. When Aziraphale sighs and reaches up to pinch between his eyes, he adds, “I mean, even if we’re not actively shagging with the intent to create new life, there’s no reason to go and write the whole thing off like it will never work—because it did. It _has_.” 

He didn’t mean for his voice to go all croaky and sore to the touch around that last bit, and there’s that strange old ache burning in the back of his throat again. Crowley squeezes his eyes shut and doesn’t say anything else, because he doesn’t think he can. And he doesn’t want this to turn into a bloody goddamned spectacle, again, when there’s simply nothing to be done about it. 

A warm hand cards through his hair, careful not to muss any curls on its way to scritching gently around the base of Crowley’s skull. The touch makes him want to purr as the hair on his arms prickles pleasantly with a sense of frisson. He only curls toward Aziraphale like a cat, leaning further into the angel’s hands.

“I don’t want you to think I’m giving up, or that I don’t want it as badly as you do,” Aziraphale says softly, “It’s just—it pains me, Crowley, seeing you hurt like this. Especially when I can do nothing to fix it.”

“I’ll be fine,” Crowley mumbles somewhere against Aziraphale’s thigh, thinking of their little Eden sleeping down the hall, and how happy he is to have her. How happy he’d be if they only ever had her, and nothing more. “Always am when I’m with you, angel.”

The baby business will just have to be what it is, for now—which is nothing more than a wish and a hope strung between them. Crowley knows he’ll come to accept it, given time. Distraction and distance are generally a decent cure-all for most things, though he’s not entirely sure that sentiment applies to immortal entities with bottomless memories. It’ll be something to _not_ bring up in counseling with his hypothetical therapist, thank you very much.

And then, of course, there’s still the whole upcoming to-do about getting married. 

The date they’ve chosen three weeks out has no real meaning or significance: it is simply a day in the second week of April, when the temperature should be just warm enough for nothing more than a light sweater or coat to ward off any chill. How many thousands of April the elevenths has Crowley lived through, all mostly unassuming drops in the great big bucket of history? How many has he lived through without Aziraphale? He hopes all of those days are behind them now.

And so, he’s quite happy to keep April the eleventh all for themselves, without having to share it with some ruddy capitalist holiday or Christ of Nazareth or any of that lot. Nobody else in the whole sodding world has to write it down as the day the guardian of the eastern gate finally tamed the original temptor—or perhaps the opposite, depending on who you asked. Same difference, really. 

Aziraphale had been very decisive in choosing a deacon of non-denominational faith to ordain the wedding, and rather efficiently axed Crowley’s idea of inviting a member of the United Kingdom’s Satanic Temple to officiate without much more than a stern look that made the house plants shrivel inward on themselves in previously unknown fear. 

(“What about whatsherface,” Crowley had suggested, tapping his foot until the name sprung into his mind. “That Gaga woman. With all the pop hits—she’s an ordained minister, you know.”

“I don’t want this to be any spectacle or sideshow event fit for the tabloid papers,” Aziraphale said, leveling Crowley with a look over the rims of his spectacles as he continued taking down names of prospective clergymen and women. “I selfishly want it to be about us and nobody else—and frankly, dear, I refuse to feel bad about it.”)

Crowley had to admit, the angel had a point there. 

And so, April the eleventh it is; an unassuming day in English springtime, when the garden is blooming and the weather could turn to pelting rain at any moment, but Won’t, because two of earth’s oldest caretakers have specifically forbade it from doing any such thing.

The guest list, as far as either of them can tell, is whittled down to three people: the wedding officiant, Eden, Miss Edith, and perhaps the marmalade-colored cat, if it wishes to grace them with an appearance from where it likes to sit on the garden wall. 

By and large, it’ll be just as they began so long ago, leaning together in the sprawl of a wild green garden, confiding only in each other while the rest of the world keeps spinning. Nobody needs to be there for any party or fanfare, nor would their presence or lack thereof change much of anything worth noting; after all, Crowley and Aziraphale have the whole rest of their lives to see what comes next.

* * *

It’s not that Crowley has _cold feet_ , per se, about the whole tying-the-knot thing; he’s already committed himself to a life settled down with the angel and the child they share, because after the whole end of the world thing nearly happens, your priorities get a bit re-sorted in the long run. He’s not a career bachelor anymore and that’s totally, completely fine—really. Really _really_. 

“I think I’m having something of a midlife crisis,” he abruptly confides in Aziraphale one afternoon, just three days shy of the day they’re to be married. “Which, I know isn’t technically possible considering we’re immortal creations made in the sparkle of divinity’s all-seeing eye, blah blah blah, you know. But still.” 

Aziraphale takes a long drink from his cup and settles back further in his chair where they’re seated under the great ash tree, having afternoon tea while Eden races about the garden with her friend the marmalade-colored cat. 

“Technically speaking, your midlife crisis would’ve been around 1000 BCE, give or take a few hundred years,” Aziraphale says, absently stroking his chin while he thinks. “Where were we, then? I seem to remember you tossing David the stone that killed Goliath and then writing it off as career advancement.” 

“Look, at the time all the Down Below knew was that King Saul had to go, and I was playing into their narrative quite nicely,” Crowley scoffs, but then winks over the rim of his own teacup. “Pretty damn good throw, though, wasn’t it?”

“Ten out of ten, you absolute scoundrel,” Aziraphale says, not doing much to hide his grin. It fades after a few moments, turning into something more serious. “But more importantly, darling, tell me more about this midlife crisis thing that’s worrying you.”

Crowley groans and slumps back in his seat, gnawing his lip while the wind cards cool fingers through his hair. “S’complicated,” he says, golden eyes unfocused and cast somewhere across the garden. “Do you ever feel like you need to—abstain, from things, to keep from ruining them?”

Aziraphale blinks but doesn’t take his eyes off Crowley. “I’m not sure,” he admits, thinking some more. “I have been keeping that bottle of Chianti unopened since 1712 because I can’t bear to let modernity’s air touch it at this point.”

Crowley blows out a shaky breath and then laughs, reaching to fiddle with the hem of his shirt. “Same concept, different stakes I think,” he says. “I don’t suppose an Angel of the Lord has much worry about bollocking things up with their good grace.” 

“I’m far from perfect, dear, if that’s what you’re getting after,” Aziraphale says, eyes flashing a bit. His missteps and mistakes through the millennia go unsaid for now, but they both know they’ve done things that go against their intended programming. Free will’s a wild ride.

Eden toddles over with a handful of wildflowers, then, some of the damp dirt still clumped in their roots. She hands them to Crowley with insistence, who accepts them graciously and lays them across the garden table. 

“Thank you, pet,” he says. “Are you and Miss Kitty having a lovely time together?”

“Miss Kitty says she has babies soon,” Eden says, rather seriously for her age, with no real concern that cats don’t typically communicate such personal information. She’ll be three in only two months’ time. “Can she come inside when it gets dark, too?” 

Crowley and Aziraphale’s eyes meet abruptly over their tea spread, having an instantaneous conversation without any words. 

“She told you that, did she?” Crowley says, peering surreptitiously over at the marmalade-colored cat. “Well, we can’t very well leave an expectant mummy out on the streets, now can we? Thank goodness she finally thought to say something.” 

“We’ll make a warm place for Miss Kitty to sleep indoors, dearest,” Aziraphale says, accepting one tiny flower that Eden passes to him on her way back to playing. “Tell her she’s welcome to come inside any time.” He pops the little stem into the top buttonhole of his waistcoat and then looks back up at Crowley with a bright expression. 

“Well! The more the merrier, as they say,” he sighs, gripping his knees. “We’ll have to remember to miracle away Miss Kitty’s ability to procreate after this, I think.” 

Crowley’s eyes suddenly widen, throat working rapidly in place. “Do you think,” he croaks, and can’t seem to get the rest out. “Do you think—He took—when she was born—” 

Aziraphale gapes at him for a long moment, and then openly gasps when he realizes who and what Crowley’s talking about. “Goodness, no,” he says in a hushed voice. “Absolutely not. He would never do that without—without warning us, or when arriving in visitation to deliver a blessing upon a newborn babe. That’s all he did, Crowley...I would bet my grace on it.” 

They both sit in the relative silence caught between them, only interrupted by the wind rustling through the tree branches above. Aziraphale’s words seem to resound in the air before taking root as the truth of the matter, and Crowley nods, more to himself than anybody else.  
  
“It’s just...like I was saying before,” he rasps. “Sometimes I worry that if I commit myself to something so good, it’ll be bound to get taken away.” His voice drops lower, into something fragile Aziraphale doesn’t often hear. “Hell only knows I was committed to you before, but it wasn’t written down on any blessed contract paper, you know. Because I’m still...what I am. What I _was_ , and where I came from.” 

“Marrying you doesn’t change any of that, even if I wish it could,” he manages, bringing a palm up to his forehead. “Fucking hell.”

Aziraphale leans across the table and takes Crowley’s one hand between his two, holding it there in the soft warmth of his palms. “I understand what you’re saying now,” he says, looking slightly pained. “But in the same breath I must tell you, dear boy, that you deserve everything you want in your heart regardless of who or what you were in the past. Because it’s still a heart, even if you’re the only demon in creation who has one.”

“Do you not worry?” Crowley croaks, looking at him with intense but watery eyes. “About the bloody ground opening up one day and swallowing me whole? The radio silence we’ve been enjoying since the botched Ending may not last forever, angel. What then?” 

“I do worry, but then I have cause to believe you and I have been informally decommissioned,” Aziraphale says softly. “We’re in a class of our own. Do you think any other demon could’ve touched God’s Son and lived to tell the tale?”  
  
“I’ve wondered about that,” Crowley muses, sniffing hard. “I just assumed, y’know. He was a human once. Doesn’t work the same way as touching outright divinity.” 

Aziraphale smiles, so sincerely, and brings Crowley’s hand up to his mouth for a kiss. “What do you think you were touching when we truly, genuinely made love and conceived Eden?” he asks.  
  
“You,” Crowley says, a little shakily. “But I touch you all the time, angel.” 

“You do,” Aziraphale says, eyes sparkling in mirth. “Isn’t that uncanny.”  
  
It’s easy to forget, several thousand years ago, when being near Aziraphale in his rawer form made Crowley’s blood feel like it was beginning to simmer inside his body—and not in a pleasant way, at the time. More like he was being cooked alive in a boiling vat of sheer, undiluted grace. 

Funny thing, how he still hadn’t been chased away from the angel, anyway. 

“Do you think we’re immune to each other?” he asks, reaching to cover one of the angel’s hands with his own where they’re still wrapped together on the table. “Like we’ve been indoctrinated to the essence of each other’s purity and damnation over the years, a little bit at a time. Some kind of...angel vaccination, s’pose you could say.” 

“I have absolutely no idea,” Aziraphale breathes out, happily enough. He squeezes Crowley’s hands and briefly looks away at where Eden is balancing on the garden wall with her little wings out, which seem to be growing fuller and stronger every day. “But I’ll tell you this, foul fiend of mine—nobody will ever take you from Eden and I, because as long as there is breath and ability in this body, I won’t let them.” 

Crowley smiles a little, mouth twitching up on one side. “You got a new flaming sword tucked away somewhere that I don’t know about?” 

“Never you worry about that,” Aziraphale says cryptically. “Just promise me you won’t abstain from anything you desire or want to be in this world of ours, Crowley. Can you do that for me?” 

“I suppose,” Crowley says after a long moment. “But only because you’re such a convincing bastard.”

Aziraphale seems satisfied with that for the time being, enough to stand and hold out a hand for Crowley to take. “Let’s go see what mischief our child has gotten up to,” he says, helping draw his partner to his feet. “And maybe have a chat with Miss Kitty about her plans for impending motherhood.”

With his hand tucked in Aziraphale’s, walking through the garden they’ve claimed and cultivated as their own, it’s easy to brush elbows with the quiet little truth that this is where he belongs. And even if it’s not where he belongs, as a demonic entity, he knows that it’s exactly where he wants to be. 

* * *

The night before the wedding is far from traditional, in most regards. Well; maybe _all_ regards, when you get right down to it.

“I’m not sleeping in here without you, so hurry up and bring your arse to bed,” Crowley calls out while Aziraphale runs water in the bathroom. “Traditions be damned.” 

“Shh sh, you’ll wake Eden,” Aziraphale stage whispers, coming out in his silk pajamas smelling of sandalwood and lavender. He makes a little to-do about turning down his side of the bed and fluffing the feather-down pillows like he’s so patiently doing this for Crowley’s sake. “You know, we’re not meant to see each other until we meet at the aisle.” 

“Do you think I give a flying toss about all that?” Crowley snorts. “You’ve put a baby in me before. After six thousand years I don't think there’s much left to be coy and demure about.”

“I know _you_ don’t give a toss, but it’s...sentimental,” Aziraphale says airily as he slides under the covers. “Nothing wrong in employing a bit of tradition here and there.” 

When they’re tucked into bed together, listening to the light sprinkling of spring rain on the cottage roof, Aziraphale clears his throat and pulls a velvet-covered box from his bedside drawer before passing it over to Crowley without a word. 

“Whassis?” Crowley asks, lashes lowered as he fiddles a little with the lid but doesn’t remove it. He peers at Aziraphale from the corner of his narrowed eyes, curious and feeling a little put on the spot. “I didn’t know we were exchanging gifts.” 

“I didn’t want or expect anything in return,” Aziraphale says, lips curving up into a small smile. “Open it for me, dear.” 

Crowley stops breathing as he lifts the lid off the box and finds a baroque pearl inside, shaped like a teardrop and as beautiful as the day it was pulled from the oyster. The gem has been set in white gold and hangs from a hook so it forms a single pearl earring. 

“Is that—?” he asks, afraid to say anything else. And then, after touching the tip of one fingertip to the pearlescent sheen, “I always knew you and Vermeer had something slippery going on. How many other priceless artifacts have you got laying around in that drawer?” 

“I knew I was saving it for a rainy day,” Aziraphale says warmly, and then vaguely gestures above them toward the sound of water drumming on the roof. “I suppose I was right.” 

Crowley pulls the pearl earring from its velveteen box and holds it up to the lamplight. His eyes suddenly feel quite wet, and he blinks hard, trying to figure out what to say around the lump in his throat. “Four hundred years’ worth of rainy days, eh,” he rasps. “This is worth a bloody fortune, you know.”

“I was hoping you’d wear it tomorrow,” Aziraphale says, gently reaching out to push the curls behind Crowley’s ear. “But I’d love to see you try it on, if you’d indulge me.” 

Crowley’s cheeks turn a little pink at that, but he reaches up and pulls the tiny gold hoop from his right ear before passing the baroque pearl back over to Aziraphale. “Put it on for me, angel,” he says, holding his hair back as soft fingers gently thread the delicate hook through the piercing in his earlobe. 

“Look at that,” Aziraphale marvels, leaning back to get a better view. “Even more stunning than the original.” 

“I dunno if I’d go that far,” Crowley snorts, though the warmth of the precious metal and the weight of the pearl makes his chest swell. He reaches up to press the earring against his pulse point as he leans in to murmur against Aziraphale’s mouth. “I love you, you sentimental, hedonistic bastard.” 

“Alas, all true,” Aziraphale says, kissing Crowley in kind. Their faces stay close together even after their lips pull apart, and they seem to both listen to the rain overhead for a few long moments. 

“How do you feel about tomorrow, darling?” Aziraphale asks quietly, stroking along Crowley’s temple and cheekbone with his thumb. 

“Pretty good,” Crowley says, because it’s true. “Feels like...I’m ready, angel. I’ve probably been ready for a notch longer than I’d care to admit, heh. But now I’m fully prepared and equipped to go through with the whole shebang. Had to eyeball the thing from all sides, you know.” 

“I’m glad,” Aziraphale says, leaning in for another sweet kiss. “By this time tomorrow, I’ll be calling you my husband. After all this time—I can hardly believe it.”

“You didn’t need somebody else’s written approval to be able to do that, you know,” Crowley snorts, though he can feel something quivery and excited in his belly at the thought of it being real and true in the eyes of the whole world, not just them. Real in the sense that it’s something they can touch, claim, and hold onto.

Aziraphale only smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling up again in the way that they do. “I want to be able to say it with that much more conviction,” he says, and then pats Crowley’s thigh twice to refocus his attention. “The deacon should be here around eleven, remember. So we’ll need to have Eden up and dressed and ready to stay with Madame Edith for the afternoon.” 

“You told her we’re renewing our vows?” Crowley says, laughing. “It seems that way a bit, doesn’t it, if you lean back and squint hard enough.” 

“Are you applying romanticized notions to our canon, darling?” Aziraphale asks, arching an eyebrow. 

Crowley reaches up to touch the baroque pearl again, like he has to remind himself it’s something real. 

“It may be written down somewhere like that, but you and I know the real story with all the saucy bits,” he says, carefully pulling the earring from his ear and tucking it back into its velvet box for safekeeping. “Shame it’s never quite as good when you hear it secondhand.”

Aziraphale sighs in agreement. “O, how the angels wept,” he says, snapping his fingers to turn off the lights. 

“And fucked me senseless along the way,” Crowley says, hunkering down in bed. “Amen.”

* * *

Crowley wakes early in the morning, though not early enough to have beaten Aziraphale out of bed. The angel is already presumably dressed and downstairs, pouring over a book by lamplight at his old desk. Eden must still be slumbering away for the time being, as the sun has only barely begun to crack through the darkness on the eastern horizon. 

With a full-body stretch and a needless yawn, he draws himself from the warmth beneath the covers and slips into the bathroom on bare feet, immediately going to turn on the tap in the clawfoot bath. 

Soon enough, steam fills the room and fogs upon the glass. Crowley undresses and looks at himself in the mirror while he waits for the tub to fill, reminded of another time in his life when he’d done just the same, though he’d been carrying Eden in his belly then. 

He presses a hand against his flat abdomen, then briefly cups it around something that isn’t there with a hollow pang somewhere behind his ribs. Once upon a time, for a brief moment, he’d considered it a betrayal that his corporeal vessel would let him carry a child at all. Now, the opposite seems true, wherein it’s betrayed him by denying him the ability to do it again. 

Perched on the edge of the tub, Crowley adds some soaking salts and sandalwood oil to the swirling water. He tries not to think about feeling bereft, on this day that should be one of the happiest in his unending lifetime; there’s no point in dwelling on lack, when he’s walking into a new season of unity and wholeness with the only other entity in creation who’s ever made him feel complete. 

Once he’s lowered himself into the tub, Crowley dips below the surface and then comes back up a few minutes later without so much as a gasp for air, sodden curls hanging around his face. He goes through the motions of washing himself, just for the sake of having something to do, and gets out a short time later to slip into his silk dressing gown and dry his hair with a snap of his fingers. 

Eden has gotten up and sees him in front of the floor-length mirror when she walks out of her own room across the hall, still a bit rumple-headed and bleary with sleep. The toddler smiles shyly, then skips over to him when Crowley kneels down and opens his arms. 

“Come see Daddy, pet,” he says, kissing into her hair once all her sweet warmth and goodness is tucked against him. “Did you sleep good? We have a big day today, your Papa and I, so we’ve got to do you up all pretty for the occasion. Would you like to wear a dress or your dungarees?” 

“Dung’ees,” Eden says, tiny fingers preoccupied with the silk sash at Crowley’s waist. “What you gonna wear?” 

“Good question,” Crowley says, pursing his lips while he thinks. “I suppose I hadn’t gotten that far yet. Do you want to help me pick something out after breakfast?” 

Eden nods, and Crowley kisses her again before gathering her up into his arms and standing. “Perfect, we’ll have a wee fashion show when you’ve woken up a bit more,” he says, carrying her down the stairs with care. “Let’s go see what Papa is doing, hmm? Maybe you can convince him to make us something good to eat.” 

“Papa make us crepes if I give him a big hug and kiss,” Eden whispers conspiratorially in her little toddler voice. “I’ll show you, Daddy.” 

Crowley grins and shakes his head. “If ever there was any doubt you were a child of mine,” he says to himself, and then lets her down at the base of the stairs so she can run through the foyer and jump into Aziraphale’s arms. 

An hour or so later finds Crowley standing in his rather suspiciously spacious closet, hands on hips, still wearing his silk dressing gown and not much else. There’s a silver promise ring on his right hand, now, and a baroque pearl earring dangling from his ear, and a strawberry blonde toddler sitting on a little cushion on the floor with daisies woven into her braided hair. 

After breakfast, Aziraphale had tidied up and kissed Eden on top of the head before mysteriously drifting back to the small drawing room with his desk and books, closing the French door and drawing the curtain behind him. Crowley’s buzzing a little at the thought of the angel having something up his sleeve, though after six thousand years of varying degrees of partnership he still can’t imagine what it might be. He only knows that he’ll find out in about an hour’s time, when he’s meant to meet the angel down in the back garden under the ash tree.

“Well, I’ve got plenty of options,” he says, pulling a slim-fit suit in subtle scarlet damask from the rack and making a slight sneer before stuffing it back in. “It’s just that—it’s not every day Daddy goes and gets married, now is it? We need to pick something...special. _Memorable._ ” 

Crowley knows a toddler can’t be all that much help with something like this, but it’s also important to make his child feel like her opinions are heard and valued from an early age, so he’s happy to hold up a black button-down with sheer mesh sleeves and turn around for her to see. “What about this one, love?” he asks. “Or d’you suppose I look like I’m going to a French Quarter funeral with Jessica Lange.” 

Eden doesn’t have much to say about that, though she does stand up to go root around in the thicket of hanging garments, tiny hands looking more intent than they have any real right to. 

“No black, Daddy,” she says matter-of-factly, and actually disappears for a second between swathes of fabric before reappearing a few moments later with something shimmery and deep blue between her fingers. “This one.”

Eden’s far too small to pull the hanger herself, so Crowley finds the garment she’d chosen and takes it off the rack for a look. When he flares it out and hooks it on the back of the door for them to survey, he finds that she’s bypassed his entire collection of Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana, Mugler, Rabanne, and Prada, only to pull out a frock that was hand-sewn and stitched by a group of migrant women from the deserts of Arabia several long centuries ago.

The fabric still moves and feels like water, so deeply blue it could be pulled from the heart of the ocean itself. It’s not quite a dress, nor a tunic, but something in-between by modern standards, and would’ve been worn with a matching veil or pashmina at the time. What makes this frock special is the hand-stitched constellations all over it, intricately done with bone needles and silk thread spun to look like shimmering gold. 

It had been a gift, a very long time ago, as repayment for a favor to a palace woman in high regard. Crowley has never once worn it, but looking at it now, he realizes he stopped breathing the moment he saw it again. 

He holds it up to himself and then goes to look in the mirror, holding the silken fabric against his body. It’s beautiful, and perfect. Eden totters in with her little trainers and Muffy to stand behind Crowley in the mirror, grinning with pearly toddler teeth. 

“You’ve got good taste, kiddo,” he says, turning to affectionately pinch her ear in a makeshift kiss. “Let’s see what it looks like when it’s on, shall we?” 

There’s a deep V in the front that shows off Crowley’s smooth chest, and a sash at the waist to tie above his narrow hips. The hem nearly falls to his ankles, and the embroidered sleeves flare out in gentle bells at the elbow but still let his forearms peek through for some sense of practicality. He doesn’t suppose he’ll need any shoes or jewelry; just this, and Aziraphale’s gifted pearl, and nothing more. 

“So pretty, Daddy,” Eden says, going to touch his reflection in the mirror for emphasis. “Muffy thinks so, too.” 

“We’ll see what Papa has to say when he sees it,” Crowley says, turning a bit to watch how the garment moves around his legs. His eyes burn, just a bit, but it’s a moment come and gone to be replaced by the jittery excitement thrumming through him like a current. “A little bird tells me he’ll love it.” 

* * *

At five minutes til eleven, Miss Edith comes inside to collect Eden and take her out the back door to the garden. 

“My oh my, don’t you just look smashing, dearie,” she says, eyes going from the top of Crowley’s head to the soles of his feet, conveniently bypassing the fact that his eyes are exposed, pupils narrowed down to a sliver. “That’s a dress that means business, that is,” she adds, waggling her eyebrows a bit. “Mr. Fell is going to be clutching his pearls.” 

“That’s the plan,” Crowley says, trying not to vibrate visibly in place where he stands. “Is he already outside? Has the deacon showed up yet?” 

“Your husband’s out there and ready, but I don’t think the minister has shown up just yet,” Edith says, already heading out with Eden’s little hand in hers. “Take a few deep breaths, lad. Renewing the vows is a whole lot easier than making them.” 

When they’re gone, Crowley does draw in a few steadying breaths, regardless of the fact he doesn’t really need them. He checks his hair again, even though it’s been immaculate the last three times he looked, and waits til seventeen seconds past eleven sharp before he opens the back door and walks out into the buttery sunlight. 

There’s no altar music, or flower petals, or heads craning around to gape at him—only the cool ground beneath his feet, and the sun on his shoulders. The wildness of the garden springs up all around, accompanying him on the stone path that leads to where Aziraphale is standing beneath the ash tree. 

The angel is looking away at first, gaze thrown somewhere toward the distant hills. He’s dressed in a white kurta himself, the whole front of the long tunic embroidered with ivory thread. For once, there are no shoes on his feet, and his curls are tight and beautiful against his head. Crowley visibly relaxes the moment he sees him, feeling relief flood through him like a drug, and then Aziraphale turns to look and their eyes meet. 

He stares, and stares some more, and then his face slowly breaks into a bright smile. There are no tears or laughter, just Aziraphale, standing there with his hand outstretched. 

“Look at you,” he says, reverent and softly enough only for Crowley’s ears when they’re standing together beneath the tree. “Just magnificent, dear. Still the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.” 

“Eden picked this out if you can believe it,” Crowley murmurs, flushed warm and rosy, for once feeling like he’s glowing from the inside out. “All credit to my personal stylist where it’s due.” 

“She’s got your good taste, doesn’t she,” Aziraphale says, adoring gaze sweeping over Crowley again. He sniffles some this time, reaching up quickly to wipe beneath his eye. “Oh, well, here I go with the waterworks. To think the deacon hasn’t even arrived yet.” 

Crowley shakes his head in wonder, because it doesn’t matter—nobody is here to judge them. He leans in and playfully tugs at the hem of Aziraphale’s tunic, fingering the fine linen just for the indulgence of it. The wind whispers sweet nothings around them, moving through the trees and the chimes they hung from the cottage awning the summer before.

“You look just as lush,” Crowley says, finding that for once in his blessed existence, he might be too humbled for flashy words. “Stopped me in my tracks when I first saw you, angel.”

Aziraphale smiles, eyes still wet. “You already knew I’d be wearing white,” he says, and then laughs around a wrecked sound in his throat. “Sorry, darling, I’m—I’m just so happy.”

Crowley reaches out and slips his fingers around Aziraphale’s hand just as the garden gate squeaks open on its old hinges, and they both look away to wave over the deacon.  
  
“Sorry I’m running a little late, fellas,” a brown skinned young man in khaki trousers and a well-ironed shirt says, latching the gate behind him and walking over with an air of effortless grace. He carries nothing with him but a well-worn bible and a kind, familiar smile. “I came on short notice.” 

Aziraphale draws in a tight wisp of a gasp, momentarily struck silent. Crowley wheels around with wide eyes like he needs to blink to clear his vision and feels his human adrenal glands rocket somewhere into orbit with the likes of Sputnik.

“Consider us shocked that you came at _all_ ,” he nearly shouts, still gripping Aziraphale like a lifeline.  
  
“And miss this special day?” Jesus asks as he walks up under the lofty canopy of the ash tree. “Not for the world.” 

“You’re dressed like a telly salesman,” Crowley says, looking Christ up and down with narrowed eyes at the same time Aziraphale finally manages to croak, “W-where’s the deacon?” 

“He got into a small traffic accident two blocks from his office on the way here,” Jesus says, shrugging innocently. “I heard the prayer go out and answered it; you’re lucky my schedule was mostly clear today.” 

“Lucky?” Crowley snorts. “I don’t know if I’d go that far.” 

Aziraphale pales some and laughs a little too loudly. “Of course we’re honored that you’re here,” he says quickly. “Anybody would be blessed, dear; let’s just take our immensely good fortune and run with it, as the saying goes.”

Crowley still doesn’t seem convinced. “You just keep showing up unannounced, don’t you,” he says, eyes narrowed. “What are we supposed to call you when you come around for a chinwag like a nosy neighbor? If I keep saying, ‘Oh look, the Lamb of God Eternal is over for tea,’ Eden will eventually have the whole of South Downs thinking our cheese has gone rogue and slid off the mental cracker.” 

“I go by a lot of names,” Jesus says pleasantly. “You can pick one, or you can make something up if you’d like.”

“Oh, alright then,” Crowley quips. “What if I wanted to call you Big J? JC? Maybe even Young Jeezy, as the American youth group pastors would say.” 

“JC works for me,” Jesus says, grinning. “Makes me feel cooler than I am.”

All three of them turn as Miss Edith walks up holding Eden’s little hand, looking slightly perplexed but otherwise none the wiser. “Ah, there you are, Deacon,” she says, reaching to shake his hand while she studies his face through her glasses. “You look so familiar, I just can’t place it. Do I know your mother?” 

Jesus smiles and shakes his head. “Probably not, but a lot of people say that. I have something of an every-man’s face.” 

“Uncanny,” Edith remarks, shaking her head so the waddles of skin at her neck move back and forth. “Well, we’re all glad you could make it. Vows don’t just go and renew themselves every day, now do they!” 

“They definitely don’t,” Jesus says, turning to smile at Aziraphale and Crowley. “Especially not for these two.” 

He clears his throat and moves to stand at the trunk of the tree, opening the worn cover of his old leather bible to a page that wasn’t bookmarked. “Should we get this show on the road? I don’t want to keep you tied up all day.”  
  
Aziraphale takes both of Crowley’s hands in his again, looking straight ahead into his eyes for the answer. “Are you ready, dear?” 

“Tally-ho,” Crowley says, trying to be snide for Jesus’ sake but instead sounding a lot more humbled than he’d meant with Aziraphale looking at him like that. “Since this is apparently as official as things get.” 

He takes another deep breath and lets it out, glancing over at Eden one last time to make sure she’s alright and behaving, before he focuses on his angel. 

Jesus smiles, bows his head for a brief prayer, and then raises his voice only for the garden to hear. “Friends and family, we are gathered here today in this small slice of paradise to celebrate the devoted partnership of two souls who have traveled to the ends of earth together. If we die and are born again in the eyes of divinity, Anthony and Aziraphale have known each other’s hearts for lifetimes eternal.”  
  
“Careful,” Crowley murmurs, cracking open one golden eye. 

Jesus only smiles, and in that moment the sun breaks free from behind a cloud. “I always am,” he says, and then continues on, telling a story that began in a wild, beautiful place and snaked through the tireless wheel of history to reach the back garden of a cottage somewhere in South Downs, only a stone’s throw from Brighton. 

“Beautiful,” Edith says somewhere nearby, dabbing at her eyes while Eden swings her legs to and fro where they sit on the garden bench. “A speaker for the ages.”

When their officiant is finished, it seems to occur to Crowley and Aziraphale both, quite suddenly, that they should’ve prepared something to say. 

“Our grooms have asked their vows be shared and heard only between themselves,” Jesus says with ease, briefly stepping away to give them some privacy. “Take your time, guys,” he says over his shoulder, even as Eden holds up her arms to be lifted and carried, beaming at him like she’s known him her whole life. 

Alone again under the ash tree, Aziraphale clears his throat and looks up beneath the fan of his lashes at Crowley, the soft line of his mouth wavering. “We’ve said so much, haven’t we,” he murmurs. “More than any two souls since the beginning of everything, I’d wager. How we haven’t gotten sick of each other after all this time is a true wonder, isn’t it.”

“There’s nobody else on this great big rock I’d have wanted to talk to for that long, you great feathery git,” Crowley says. “Six thousand years later, you and our kid are the only reasons I want to get up and see the same shite all over again. Doing it with you at my side is what makes it worth doing, angel.”

“Such a delicate way with words you have, dear,” Aziraphale says, laughing softly. “Funny, I know just what you mean.” 

Crowley snorts, shaking his head a bit, and leans in to press their faces close together. “Shall we call our friend JC back over and get this finished, then? I’d very much like to shag you right here on this spot once everybody leaves.” 

“How ye tempt me, o’ wretched harbinger of original sin,” Aziraphale says with a breathy sigh, though he’s smiling the whole time. He clears his throat, looking pointedly in the direction of Jesus Christ and their child. “We’re ready when you are, Deacon.” 

“Got your rings ready to go?” Jesus asks when he strolls back over, thumb tucked between the pages of his bible. “Let’s do it.” 

“With this exchange of vows, our couple has been brought together in an inseparable union forged through all the world’s trials and tribulations, through love and loss, through sickness and health,” Jesus says, watching as the pair swaps wedding bands that seem to appear through deft sleight of hand. “By the powers vested in me, I hereby bring you together in lawfully wedded matrimony from this day forward, forever into eternity.” 

“Guess that’s our cue to snog,” Crowley says, before Jesus can try to finish with any prayer. He looks into Aziraphale’s pale eyes and shivers when he feels the angel’s grace brush up against him. “What say you?” 

“That I’ve been waiting to do this for a long time, you wily old snake,” Aziraphale says, taking Crowley’s face between his hands and kissing him right there in front of God’s only son. 

Crowley merely leans into it, twisting his fingers up through Aziraphale’s curls, hanging on for all he’s worth. When they pull apart, husband and husband at last, Jesus has already closed his bible and tucked it under his arm. 

“Congrats, you two,” he says, giving them a little two-fingered salute as he makes to head off toward the garden gate. “I’ll be seeing you around sometime. Not too soon—can’t have any cheese sliding off crackers for my sake.” 

Crowley bites into his lip at that, warm and buzzed from kissing but a little embarrassed as he calls after Jesus’s retreating back. “Just—ring us or something, yeah? Before you drop in. Send a dove, write it in the sky, whatever’s easiest.” 

Jesus dips a hand into his pocket and pulls out an iPhone. “I’ll shoot you a text next time I’m in town.” 

“Please do,” Aziraphale says, merrily waving him off. “And thank you again.”

When he’s gone and walked down the lane toward a parked car they don’t see, Miss Edith comes up and dabs her nose with a crumpled pink tissue. “Beautiful, lads,” she says, snuffling a bit as she goes to pull something out of her sweater pocket. “It’s not much, but I wanted you to have a bit of something to go toward a special night out sometime.” 

Inside is a voucher for a gourmet restaurant in Brighton, generous enough to afford them a bottle of wine—miraculously bottomless, wherever Crowley and Aziraphale are concerned. The angel accepts it gracefully and thanks her, though he doesn’t mention that they likely won’t be venturing out tonight to celebrate. 

“Are you sure you’re able to take Eden like this?” he asks, concerned brows knitting together. “If anything at all... _untoward_ happens, as it were, please don’t hesitate to call us, Edith. Anything and everything can be an emergency under the right circumstances.” 

“What could possibly happen in one afternoon?” Edith scoffs, gently nudging Eden forward. “Give your Daddy and Papa a kiss, poppet. We’ve got chocolate biscuits to make and games to play at Nanny Edith’s house.” 

Ever brave, Eden wraps her arms around Crowley and Aziraphale’s necks for hugs and kisses before she scampers off toward the garden gate Christ departed through only minutes before. The marmalade-colored cat is now waiting there with her tail bent over like a shepherd’s staff, round and full of kittens yet to come. 

“I’ll see you tonight,” Edith says, winking as she turns to hurry after the toddler. “Don’t put your face near that moggy, love, she’s probably full of fleas.” 

Crowley snaps his fingers on that note, banishing said fleas from existence. Together he and Aziraphale watch as the old woman and child walk hand in hand up the hill with a cat at their heels and then over the crest until they’re out of sight, the sound of hearty singing floating along on the wind behind them. 

“Goodness, what a morning we’ve had,” Aziraphale says, gazing off toward the sea in the distance before he turns to peer at Crowley. “One for the record books, don’t you think?”

Crowley picks up the angel’s left hand to inspect his new wedding band more closely, smiling as the six tiny diamonds glint in the sunlight. His own ring matches perfectly, the white gold snug and warm on his third finger. 

“Day’s not over yet, angel,” Crowley says, heavy-lidded gaze warm and steady on Aziraphale’s face. “We have the whole afternoon to ourselves.” 

“Then sit with me for a moment, dear, and let’s catch our breath,” Aziraphale says, snapping a woven blanket and antique picnic basket into existence there under the ash tree. “We can break bread as two souls brought together in matrimony at last.” 

And so they sit, cross-legged and at ease, with a certain bottle of prized Chianti paired with porcini ragu and cracked pepper prosciutto that melts like butter on the tongue. It is, in two necessary words, fucking delightful. Crowley sprawls out with his wine stem in hand while Aziraphale takes a cup of tea after lunch, the two of them sipping idly in companionable silence while they listen to the songbirds chirp and the chimes tinkle and shimmer in the breeze.

After a spell, Aziraphale draws in a gentle breath of revelation. Crowley looks up at him, wondering, as the angel reaches to touch the embroidered blue sleeve where it rests against his smooth forearm. 

“Look,” he says, drawing the sleeve back to reveal the smattering of russet freckles on Crowley’s skin. “I never quite realized that heaven’s constellations are on you, too.” 

“Perks of being a ginger,” Crowley says offhandedly, though his breath catches some as Aziraphale traces some phantom shape near the softness of his inner elbow. 

“It seems more likely that the stars were forged in your image,” Aziraphale says, pressing his lips to the tributary of veins at Crowley’s wrist, soft and reverent. 

“And I think you really ought to let me shag you, now,” the demon croaks, sitting up to take Aziraphale by the shoulder and gently push him back onto the spread blanket. The angel goes willingly, only making encouraging sounds as Crowley swings a leg over his new husband’s hips, pinning him there with both hands at his wrists so their faces are only inches apart. 

“Put a ward up,” Crowley murmurs, busy with one hand as he reaches down to fumble around for Aziraphale’s cock. “I don’t want any onlookers getting a cheeky eyeful.” 

“Done and done,” Aziraphale breathes, lifting his hips just a little to help Crowley push his linen trousers down out of the way. The vibration of the angel’s magic hums around them in the open air for a moment, then locks and seals tight, invisible to the naked eye. 

Crowley feels it like static electricity on his skin and in the fine hairs at the nape of his neck as he bunches up his frock at the waist and takes Aziraphale’s length in hand. He rocks back on it once, then again, sliding the angel’s cock through his own slick with a delightful shiver before taking him up to the hilt in one fluid motion. 

He moans outright at the sudden fullness of it, the rightness of this moment. Laid out on a blanket in the grass beneath the sprawling ash tree, rocking into each other without hurry. There is only here, now, angel and fallen angel. This pinpoint on the unwinding reel of time. The soft, labored cadence of their breathing and the leaves rustling above. 

All the angels left in heaven could be watching from above but Crowley doesn’t care. Let them see, if they want. He certainly isn’t ashamed.

“Get your wings out,” Crowley pleads, already halfway wrecked, voice edged with something that shakes from within him. Aziraphale’s eyes don’t once leave his face as his own wings unfurl and fan out behind him where he lays, pinned and beautiful like a snared dove. Crowley’s wings burst free a moment later and then encircle them both, blue-black feathers mixing with soft ivory.

“You feel it, too,” Crowley whispers, clenching around Aziraphale as verdant clover blooms in a blanket beneath them. It all hums, the soil and the mushrooms and the flowers, singing some ancient song that feels like another beating pulse. His pupils narrow to a razor’s edge set against drops of liquid gold, but his voice shakes with wonder. “The garden. The wild of it.”  
  
“I feel it, and you,” Aziraphale answers, reaching up to touch his husband’s face with reverence. “The earth remembers, my love. We’ve been here since the beginning.” 

“Paradise wasn’t in b-bloody England,” Crowley chokes out, submerged in the blue of his angel’s eyes.

“No,” Aziraphale answers, taking Crowley by the hips now and arching upward. “But Paradise is a part of you and I.” 

Crowley only nods because he can’t speak now, throat tightening as his fingers dig into the soil, heart thudding in time with something that reverberates beneath him, above him, all around him. Aziraphale is so deep within him that he swears he can feel him in his core, the bliss of it all twisting the wind from his lungs. 

It’s difficult to say what happens next with any real exactness; Crowley only knows that it has not ever happened before.

The tangible world is only a distant blur serving as the backdrop to the raw burn of divinity. Aziraphale’s grace is there, right there, knocking at the door within him. Crowley does not turn away or cower in spite of it because of who or what he is—not that he ever did. But the door opens and the light comes rushing in, blinding, ethereal, a tsunami beyond mortal comprehension. He meets it head on, embraces it with everything within him, and doesn’t stagger or fall. 

There is fire, and stardust, and the long-lost smell of the sun beating down on the first garden of man. There are a thousand seeing eyes and dozens of arms and six great wings dusted with constellations surrounding him, terrifying and otherworldly but all radiating nothing but love.

For a moment, Crowley thinks he’s being turned inside out, like a scrap of the universe’s edge being pulled in on itself into a black hole. The diluted damnation inside him compresses into a single atom of darkness, trembling under the weight of Everything, a drop of coal that can’t be crushed into a diamond.

Then, he’s looking out at the cosmos and the cosmos looks back like an old friend. Two stars burn near each other through a rippling ribbon of galaxy, held within him, like points of sunlight glistening in two yellow irises that can’t be blinked away. 

For a singular, beating moment that lasts for eternity, he feels like he’s even more whole than he was before he fell.

When they come back to themselves, some time later that may have only been mere seconds, Aziraphale is sitting up with Crowley still nestled in his lap. The demon holds the angel’s face between both hands, panting gently, cheeks and throat streaked with tears. Their wings are thrown outward and almost limp where they sag between their shoulder blades, the long tips of flight feathers making soft imprints like serpent tracks in the garden dirt. 

The ward around the garden has cracked and fallen, burnt out through the angel’s onset exhaustion, but there’s no living creature for a hundred kilometers who has turned an eye or ear in the direction of the little blue cottage on South Downs. 

“My dear,” Aziraphale says, tipping his head forward to rest against Crowley’s chest, and then can’t seem to say much more. 

“Blimey,” Crowley rasps, laughing a little hoarsely in spite of it all. “I think I just caught pregnant.” 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe I completely forgot to deliver on my final Jesus gag even though I set it up in the original draft?! Me either. For those of you who already read the ~finished story, I went ahead and split that huge third part in half for reading ease and added my little pinch of silliness here at the end. To everybody else: enjoy!

Miss Kitty’s kittens are born into the world several nights later, safely tucked into a flannel-lined wooden crate by the radiator in the loft. There is a black one, a white one, a grey one, and one wee calico with an orange spot on top of her head.

“Do you suppose that’s a metaphor for something?” Crowley asks once the new babies are discovered, peering in at the little wriggling things with a fondness he can’t quite hide. 

“Probably, but I wouldn’t be fussed about it, you know,” Aziraphale says where he’s crouched down in his dressing gown, showing Eden the kittens from a respectable distance. “They’re quite darling for a metaphor, aren’t they?” 

Eden’s wide grey eyes are enraptured, though she keeps Muffy held close as Aziraphale lays out some new boundaries now that there are wee things in the house.

“You must be very gentle, and let Miss Kitty have her privacy when Papa or Daddy aren’t here to supervise,” he says, petting Eden’s hair into place. “Taking care of one child is hard enough work, much less four hungry mouths to feed.” 

When Eden has heard one or two (or three) bedtime stories and said good-night to the kittens one by one and been tucked into her little cot down the hall, Crowley and Aziraphale come back to their own bed and slip under the duvet together. Miss Kitty’s low purring can be heard from where she’s dozing quite contentedly with her brood, and Crowley watches her, feeling the old familiar stirring within him.

He _knew_ the moment it happened, knew he’d been quite literally graced with child, but it’s still too early in this human vessel for the change to manifest. He’d been weeks along with Eden before he’d taken ill with those first few early signs that something was amiss, and here and now, the idea of waiting a month or more for that confirmation seems like a lifetime.

Aziraphale searches for a second heartbeat, probably more to indulge him than anything, but can’t find one just yet. 

“Rest and be kind to yourself, darling,” he says to Crowley, squeezing above his knee affectionately. “Even life’s most beautiful miracles like to drag their feet and dawdle from time to time, don’t they. You only need to focus on being as happy and healthy as you can possibly be.”

“I know,” Crowley tells him, suddenly feeling quite raw about it. He swallows thickly, trying to make a point of looking at some blank spot on the wall. “It—it’ll be fine.

And it is, mostly, as the weeks pull them further into spring’s embrace and the promise of a warm summer. The kittens grow bigger every day and eventually they’re romping about the cottage and venturing into the garden under Miss Kitty’s watchful eye, all completely and happily ignorant of the fact that they’ve each been blessed with protection and the inability to produce any more of their kind.

The neighbors over the next hill on the opposite side have two young children, a year or two older than Eden but still very interested in playing amidst the magical whimsy of childhood, and so they all agree to go down to the sea one afternoon and watch the ocean tide slip up over the sand and stones as the sun lazily shines against steep cliffs.

If Eden just so happens to turn a bit of driftwood into a tap dancing crab and a sandcastle into a bastioned fortress while they play, the other children don’t seem to mind that much at all. Their parents remain blissfully unaware of any unusual goings-on of the sort, content to sit beneath the shade of a wide umbrella and share egg salad sandwiches and lemonade with Messrs. Crowley and Fell, who really are the most oddly-matched but fascinatingly compatible couple, in their humble English opinion. It’s not very often you see a bona-fide Victorian swimming costume much at all these days, much less on a pleasantly soft man with a beard whose husband has decidedly opted for a sleek, black bathing suit bottom that cost 800 quid somewhere on highstreet in London.

Down by the water with Eden as she searches for small treasures washed up by the surf, Crowley holds his floppy hat against the top of his head and seems to grow even more freckled in the coastal sun. He still looks thin and lithe in his swimsuit and vest, though there’s a small bump very low between his hips, that could be a hearty lunch or perhaps something else. 

He doesn’t realize he’s holding a hand over his belly as he walks up and down the beach with Eden until they come back and the neighbor children’s mother, Colette, looks at him from over the tops of her sunglasses and says, “I wish I looked half as good as you when I was in the family way.” 

Crowley raises an eyebrow over the tops of his own sunglasses, feeling his lip begin to curl into a toothy smile. “That’s a foolishly brave assumption to make about somebody, Colette, but I do respect your candid audacity,” he says, dropping into a beach chair beside her with an effortless flourish before offering a sly wink. “Can’t say you’re wrong, though.” 

It feels a little more real, after that. Having somebody believe in what he could only imagine before.

* * *

On the first morning he’s stricken with a rollicking round of being ill in the loo, Crowley crawls back into bed and lets Aziraphale dab a cool cloth around his temples, feeling the most peculiar mixture of utter wretchedness and stark relief.

“You can feel them too now, yeah?” Crowley croaks, pulling his nightshirt up to show off the small roundness at his middle. “I can’t miracle away all the gross bits like last time, so it must mean something’s working.” 

Aziraphale places a tender palm on his husband’s stomach, his wedding band warm where it rests near Crowley’s navel. He concentrates for a moment, brow twitching a bit before he reopens his eyes. 

“I can feel the child’s grace, just as I felt Eden’s,” he says, smiling. “As pure and sure as light itself.”

“Why’d you make that face, then,” Crowley says, eyes narrowing as he tries to steer around another wave of nausea. 

“What face?” Aziraphale asks, blinking.

“This one,” Crowley says, closing his eyes and making a near-perfect impersonation of the twitching angel. “Something's off.” 

“I wouldn’t say anything’s _off_ ,” Aziraphale says, tidily clearing his throat. “It just feels—a bit different, than before. But then again, you and I both know that no two souls are bound to be exactly the same.”

“But _how_ does it feel different, is what I’m asking.”. 

“Well, I suppose in frequency, shape, color—not that I’m an expert on the matter with my direct access to _The Heavenly Handbook on Hybridic Celestial Offspring_ , mind you,” Aziraphale says somewhat sharply. “But Eden’s grace always felt more attuned, and single in its hue,” he adds. “This feels...more diverse, somehow. Multifaceted.“

“Oh, Gods,” Crowley moans, throwing an arm across his face. “It really is a litter of snittens this time, isn’t it.” 

Aziraphale sighs heavily and folds his hands across his knees. “And if they were snittens, we would love them no less, now would we?” 

“No less,” Crowley mumbles, peeking out from beneath his elbow. “This is what I get for letting you fuck me when I’m just bloody _thinking_ about your true form.”

Aziraphale’s expression softens some as he thinks back to their wedding day. “That was really splendid, wasn’t it,” he breathes, looking wistful. “To be touched so deeply, and intimately, without the full constraints of our flesh-and-blood bodies. Marvelous—simply beyond the capabilities of human language.”

Crowley knows what he means, though it’s never been as easy to come outright and say it like the angel does. 

“Listen,” he says instead, swinging the door across the room closed with a flick of his wrist. “I know something else deep and intimate I can touch, if you’re down for some double-ended action.” 

Aziraphale flushes as pink as an English rose and then bites into his bottom lip. “You’ve been ill this morning, dear,” he says. “Don’t push yourself on my behalf.” 

Crowley snaps his fingers and suddenly a phallic apparatus in a harness appears on the bed between them, one side long and thick and the other more subtly curved and tapered. 

“I’m right as rain,” he says breezily. 

“Oh my,” Aziraphale says, eyeballing the smooth silicone. “Well, in that case…” 

And it was a very good morning after that, indeed.

* * *

After Eden’s third birthday comes and goes in May—a more social event, this time, with cake and presents and a small party of friends and neighbors in the garden—, her wings seem to begin catching up with her more and more each day. They still aren’t strong enough for flight, but if she flaps them hard enough she can manage enough force to lift herself half a meter off the ground. The downy fluff of them gradually shifts and changes in texture, like she may be preparing to go through a molt as time wears on. 

She’s turning into more of her own little person with lightning speed, smart and rambunctious and full of mischief, much to Aziraphale’s fatherly woe. He’s had to start a new ledger on her growth and daily activities, and is optimistic that with a year or so more of learning how to control her acute abilities, she’ll be ready to join the other children in nursery school.

They haven’t told her about her new sibling just yet; it’s something Crowley mentions at least once a day, especially now that his belly is beginning to round out into something noticeable. Eden seems content to believe he’s eaten one or two too many of Nanny Edith’s chocolate biscuits recently, but soon they’ll need to sit her down and clarify that there’s a new baby on the way.

As could be expected, the universe likes to work in more mysterious ways than that. 

It’s a muggy evening in late July, unusually sticky despite the paltry sea breeze. Aziraphale is in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, wrist-deep in a game duck fresh from the butcher he’s cleaning out and preparing to tie up and roast in the oven with orange bitters. Crowley lounges on the carpet in the adjacent sitting room, helping Eden build a precariously leaning castle out of wooden blocks. 

“Use the arch-shaped one, love,” he advises, handing her a block. “Seems more Byzantine than Gothic Revival, to me.” 

Eden takes the block and studies her castle before wedging the new piece into place. Then she turns around, furrows her little brows, and says, “Daddy, I can hear your tummy sometimes.” 

“Hear it?” Crowley says with a snort, peering down at his little bump and then back up at Eden. “What do you mean?” 

“I just do,” she says with a strange air of wisdom, turning back to play with her blocks. “You’re going to have kittens like Miss Kitty, right?” 

In the kitchen, there’s a thump and clatter as Aziraphale drops his spatula and it smacks against the hardwood. 

A moment later the angel walks in with a grave look on his face, meeting Crowley’s wide eyes head-on. He doesn’t bother to loosen the strings on his apron as he kneels down there next to the tower of blocks so he’s at eye level with their toddler. 

“Daddy and I need to tell you about something very special, darling,” he says. “It’s very exciting news for our family.” 

Eden doesn’t say anything, simply turns and listens with her head cocked to the side. 

“Erm,” Crowley says, wiping a hand across his mouth. “Well, it’s not kittens, pet—at least. I don’t _think_ it’s kittens.” He laughs a bit nervously, then waves toward Aziraphale. “Angel, you’re better at this than me—go on and tell her the logistics.”

“Well,” Aziraphale breathes, eyes very blue and bright. “Daddy has a baby growing in his belly, you see. It’s still small, but in just a few more months you’re going to have a new little brother or sister.” 

Eden thinks that over for a long, silent moment, little rosebud mouth pursed into a bow. 

“Brother _and_ sister,” she says, and then goes right back to stacking her blocks. 

“ ** _What?_ **” Aziraphale and Crowley blurt at the same time. 

Eden holds up two tiny fingers for clarification. “Two,” she says, perfunctory. “Just like we count. One, two.” 

She has nothing else to share on the matter, even when prompted for more. Aziraphale kneels there at Crowley’s side and lays a hand across his abdomen again, closing his eyes and concentrating until the creases smooth out in his forehead. 

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” he says in awe, opening his eyes to find two golden ones staring back at him, irises round with wonder. “There’s two.” 

At the scan clinic in Brighton the next afternoon, the technician rolling the wand through the blue goo smeared on Crowley’s belly confirms the same thing. 

“Ah, there they are,” she says, pointing at the screen where two small blobs seem to curl together. “Two distinct heartbeats. You’ve got yourself two for the price of one with this winning ticket, lads. Congratulations.” 

On the car ride back home, Crowley drives much more carefully than he usually would. He may even obey a traffic law or two, but neither he nor Aziraphale are especially preoccupied with counting.

“I’m going to be as big as a bloody house by the end of this,” he moans while Aziraphale positively glows in the passenger seat. “Twins. TWINS! We don’t even have room enough for one more, much less two.” 

“I would be amenable to a few small renovations,” Aziraphale says brightly. “I’ve been thinking it’d be rather simple to hire some builders and add an addition on at the back of the cottage, so we could turn the study into another bedroom.” 

Crowley only keeps shaking his head in disbelief. “Twins,” he says, holding up two fingers like Eden had the night before. “Two babies. Dos. Deux. Dva, for Chri— _Pete’s_ holy sake.” 

“Had the possibility never crossed your mind?” Aziraphale asks, while Eden plays with Muffy in her booster seat behind him. “It’s not entirely uncommon, you know.”

“I mean—yeah, but still,” Crowley says, reaching up to push his hair back. “I was considering myself lucky enough to catch with one, angel. This is gravy on top of gravy.” 

“After all those months of trying to no avail, I believe we’ve been blessed twofold,” Aziraphale says confidently. “It’s as simple as that, dear boy. Quite simple indeed.” 

Crowley stays quiet, then, though his mind has wandered back to that day in the garden. He recalls the wave of light, the eternal span of everything, Aziraphale’s love and essence reaching into him and plucking the strings of whatever scrap of soul he had left and turning it into harpsong. 

There had been two stars shining in his eyes, pinpricks of fiery light that refused to blink out. 

It’s a lot to take in, in the grand scheme of ineffable things. Cause and effect, black and white, the alpha and omega. A wrathful god, and then a benevolent one. How the original paradise still hid somewhere inside them, in their cells and atoms, and not anywhere else on the planet. 

Crowley rests his hand over his belly as he drives back home, thinking very intently about grace.

* * *

July bleeds into August, and August gives way to September. Another year, passing them by within the blink of an eye. The days are somehow endless and unbelievably short when one lives more like a mortal; Crowley swears that some days he climbs out of bed at dawn, spins in a circle, and then climbs right back into it. The only real indicator that time is passing is the growth of his belly each day, looming ever-larger beneath his clothes until he gives up completely with trying to look presentable and trades most of his fitted trousers and shirts for soft cotton tunics or canvas dungarees around the cottage.

In its second year, the garden has bloomed even more beautifully than it did the summer after they moved in. There’s more sense and direction in the wild chaos of it now, carefully tended and planted by a demon and his little helper while a family of cats scamper about chasing grasshoppers and butterflies.

Crowley had never really worked with wider patches of soil when he was still living in the flat in London, but he takes to it like a second nature and digs in with his trowel and hands and plants with reckless abandon. They have daffodils and tulips in the spring, dahlias and sunflowers and patches of lavender in the summer. His pumpkin vines are readying for harvest and the apple tree sapling stays strong and hardy, growing tiny little buds with the promise of larger fruit in the years to come.

He plants a small herb garden just to see how it fares, and at the end of the season they have a variety of dried flower petals and other things to stow away, which Aziraphale packages up into little sachets for brewing tea, sending along a tin to Miss Edith and the neighbors beyond. 

If this is their big gay BBC special life now, Crowley supposes it’s not all that bad. 

He’s content to play with his daughter and feel the strange little kicks and tugs inside him as his unborn children grow and strengthen, enough that their energy blooms through him in waves. They respond to his and Aziraphale’s touch, moving and wrestling around like two tiny otters in the well of his belly. Other pregnant people would be bound to complain, but Aziraphale’s small blessings and confident hands keep the worst of any discomfort at bay, and Crowley has nothing left to do but enjoy himself and glow. 

The builders are set to begin work on the addition in October, and the painters will come and tidy up with a fresh coat of pale blue in their wake. So much of what they want to do could be accomplished with the wave of a hand or a well-intentioned thought, but there’s something satisfying in the physical process of it all—seeing raw materials form into structures, and structures turn into a new part of their cottage. He watched the great bloody pyramids get built in Giza, but somehow it never seems to get old, what humanity can do with some blood, sweat, and determination.

So it boils down to plants, babies, and home renovations, then. Crowley supposes he’s always liked watching things grow into something beautiful from nothing, including the world he and Aziraphale have always called home.

As the cottage begins to grow brick by brick, Miss Edith sets to work with her crochet hooks and a massive basket of yarn. They get an entire newborn-worthy wardrobe out of her within weeks, in all shades of pink and blue and green and yellow, and even some baby clothes that were fashionable in the 70s and 80s from her attic storage. Crowley holds up a onesie with a faded print of Barney the purple dinosaur on it, smiles like he’s in agony, and politely folds it up before tucking it away somewhere out of sight. 

It’s understood through their small circle of neighbors on the Downs that they want to be “surprised,” as the humans say, by the so-called gender of the babies when they’re born. The fact that Eden ascertained she’d have a new brother and sister when Crowley was only a few months along goes entirely unmentioned, except by the toddler herself, who has already started picking out names for her new siblings, including (but not limited to) such wonders as: Snail, Peppa Pig, Darling, Rice Pudding, and Alibaba.

“We really ought to be thinking about that sooner than later, haven’t we,” Aziraphale mentions one day when Crowley’s about seven months gone. “Let’s each compile a list of things that are important or meaningful to us and compare notes from there, just to see if anything rings a bell or two.” 

When they reconvene later—with Crowley’s list scrawled on the back of a Tesco flyer, and Aziraphale’s written in longhand calligraphy on a sheet of parchment—to share their favorites, Aziraphale has a varied list of authors, poets, historical figures, and martyrs that he goes through with brief annotations on why they’re worth commemorating. 

Crowley clears his throat, and squints at the five things written down in his spiky handwriting: “I’ve got Massetto, Latour, Airén, Merlot, and Syrah. That last one has got a little something to it, don’t you think?” 

Aziraphale stares at the list for a long beat through his glasses, just to confirm what he’s reading is real. “Why, if I’m not mistaken,” he says eventually, “these are all wines.” 

Crowley only shrugs and gives him an impish grin. “You said to write down what was important to us.”

They decide to wait to name the babies until once they’re born, after that.

* * *

The addition at the rear of the cottage is finished in late November, and Aziraphale makes a pleasant fuss of moving his books and old desk into the room with wide glass windows overlooking the garden. Crowley brings a few sun-loving plants in to add some life to the space, and from there they set about doing up the old study as a new “big girl” room for Eden. 

It’s at the foot of the stairs leading to the loft, so not too far in case of any emergency or need for nighttime cuddles should a thunderstorm pop up out of the blue. She picks out lavender paint all by herself and a new spread for her little twin bed dotted with terribly obnoxious kittens. The small attic room she used to occupy is filled with baby things and two bassinets that’ll be moved into the master bedroom for the first few months of the twins’ lives; that’s as far ahead as they want to think, and so it all settles into place for now.

Crowley isn’t _quite_ as big as a house at this point, but he certainly feels like it when he happens to glance in a mirror. His belly is big enough to rest his cup and saucer on when he takes a spot of decaf during afternoon tea, and definitely something that gets in the way in terms of more, er—nefarious husbandly activities. 

Riding your husband into the mattress isn’t quite as simple or easy as it once was when you’re nearly eight months pregnant with twins, as it turns out. Getting on his hands and knees works in a pinch, but sometimes Crowley admittedly wants a...softer touch, if he’s being honest with himself. Aziraphale is always happy to accommodate him, though, and they make do under the present circumstances. 

Moving the floor-length mirror closer to the bedside was a genius idea, really, until Crowley catches sight of himself one morning with his right leg hitched up under Aziraphale’s forearm as he gets steadily fucked into from behind. It’s slow, slow, and agonizingly tender under the grey wash of morning—and there he is with this great big belly, propped on his side with Aziraphale’s mouth at the nape of his neck, leaving sweet kisses and an endless litany of praise. It’s a lot to reconcile all at once, actually. Maybe too much.

“You’re crying, love,” Aziraphale says, concern threaded through his voice even as he’s still sheathed to the hilt in his husband. “Are you alright?”

“M’fine,” Crowley murmurs, reaching up to cover his face as the tears continue to well up and fall. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Don’t stop, it’s—it’s just so good, angel.” His voice crumples up like a paper ball in his throat as he tries to force the rest out around a sob. “You. This. Evry’thing.” 

Aziraphale gently lowers Crowley’s leg and reaches up to touch his chin, tipping his face back for a proper kiss. “I know, darling,” he murmurs, thumbing away some of the wetness on Crowley’s cheeks. “I know.”

“Bugger these damn hormones,” Crowley croaks. “I’m a wreck.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with letting love and gratitude flow through you,” Aziraphale tells him, pressing a kiss behind Crowley’s ear as he reaches down to stroke the sensitive place between his legs. “It’s healing, isn’t it? To know you can love and be so loved in return.”

“Y-yes,” Crowley moans, reaching back to grip Aziraphale’s thigh as his mouth drops open in wordless gasp of pleasure. The angel pivots forward again, rocking up into him, and hooks his hand under his husband’s knee to help ease the way. “Fuck, angel. The things you do to me.” 

“Look and see for yourself, how gorgeous you are,” Aziraphale says, pulling out with a slick, lewd sound, only to thrust back in with tantalizing slowness until Crowley’s stretched around him again. “Full of life, handsome and glowing—ready to bring forth children forged out of boundless love. Do you know how strong you are, Anthony? How much power you hold within the essence of who you are.” 

Crowley looks and _sees_ , guided by the gentle praise of Aziraphale’s words. He has always felt like he’s lived life on this earth to a great advantage, considering who and what he is, the strings he could pull, the sway he could muster with wiles and temptations. He’s influenced the cast and shape of all humanity and yet, maybe this is a different kind of power. Something he can keep for himself, hold between two grateful hands that have known real darkness—something that doesn’t need to be carried out on anyone else’s bid or behalf. 

When he comes it’s with the sweetest relief, clenching and fluttering around Aziraphale’s cock as the angel follows behind only moments later, mouth pressed like a holy brand into the crook between Crowley’s neck and shoulder. They stay like that for a time, wedged together until the tears on Crowley’s face have dried and Aziraphale has lowered his leg, reaching up to cup his husband’s swollen belly instead. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale says, dropping a sweet kiss onto a freckled shoulder. “Most ardently, dear.” 

“Alright then, Mr. Darcy,” Crowley snorts, though he reaches down to press his hand over Aziraphale’s, pleased as punch when they can feel the babies move. “I love you, too.”

* * *

December arrives in a flurry of wet snow, icing the roads and making it nigh impossible to take the Bentley out for a drive. Not that Crowley’s doing much driving these days, considering his belly will hardly fit behind the wheel of the car. 

The Christmas decorations go up with a little less fanfare than the previous year, but with some tasteful sincerity all the same. The cottage smells of cedar logs and pine boughs and occasionally plum pudding or cinnamon rolls, if Aziraphale gets a bee in his bonnet and decides to bake. All five of the cats sleep piled together in baskets near the hearth, occasionally meowing for a bit of canned tuna or a shallow saucer of cream, but otherwise remaining perfectly content to stay indoors in light of the weather. If they aren’t by the fire, they can usually be found in pairs snuggled together in Eden’s bed, purring away as she tells them stories with the help of Muffy and her toy dinosaurs.

Three days before Christmas Eve, Miss Edith braves the snow in her Wellies to trek up the hill with a tin of biscuits and Pixie tucked in a shoulder bag along for the ride, wrapped in three crochet scarves and a knit cap tugged down over her ears. 

“How you haven’t popped yet is a miracle to behold,” Miss Edith remarks when Crowley welcomes her in for a so-called chinwag and cuppa, tutting and shaking her head in disbelief as Aziraphale goes to put the kettle on. She passes him the tin of biscuits but keeps Pixie in the bag for safekeeping from the curious cats. “Any day now, I bet. I’d be surprised if you made it to next week.”

“Let’s hope so,” Crowley says, already with a chocolate biscuit halfway to his mouth. “I can’t think of anything more heinous than popping a child out on Christmas.” 

Edith gives him a strange look at that, but doesn’t seem too bothered to remark on it otherwise. “Well, whatever happens, you two know you can call on me to help with Eden,” she says, reaching down to pat the toddler’s curls when she runs out of her room for a hug. “Day or night, you know Nanny Edith is just down the way in a pinch, right poppet?” 

They have their tea and some small sandwiches, and Miss Edith doesn’t linger too long before she’s packing up again and readying to go. “I’ll pop in with a little something for the family on Christmas Eve,” she says, waving Aziraphale off when he tries to dissuade any more generosity. “It’s the season of gifts, Mr. Fell, and I intend to do my own part in the Lord’s honor. A spot of charity never hurt anybody, now did it?”

When she’s gone, the cottage is a little quieter but no less quaint or cozy. The shop in Soho has been simply festooned and locked up for the year, and Aziraphale’s affairs seem to be pleasantly sorted and tied up for the season. Instead of pouring over old tomes and manuscripts in the study, he’s content to sit by the fire with Eden in his lap, reading aloud from books about pirates and great adventurers, talking animals and magical fairies no bigger than her little thumb. 

“Are you ready to be a big sister?” he asks her one evening after they’ve finished reading about the Princess and the Pea. The sentiment has been a generally accepted one over the past few months as they’ve gradually prepared for two more babies in the home, but Aziraphale suddenly doesn’t know if he or Crowley have outright asked their firstborn for her thoughts on the matter.

“Yeah,” Eden says, simply enough. She leans further into Aziraphale’s side and takes on an oddly adult expression of great diplomacy. “I’ll show them how to play nice in the garden. Do you think they’ll have wings, too, Papa?” 

“Oh, well, I don’t suppose we know just yet,” Aziraphale says, wrapping his arm around her and straightening the afghan thrown over their legs. “We didn’t know you had yours for two whole years, you know. You surprised the life out of me and Daddy when we first saw them.” 

“Hmm,” Eden hums, grinning up at him. “I had to grow like a butterfly.” 

“Yes you did,” Aziraphale says, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. “My wee little caterpillar who turned into a butterfly.” 

The snow continues to pile up outside, frosting over the hills like dusting sugar that twinkles sometimes in the twilight hour. The warren of rabbits who live on the hillside have tucked themselves into their dens for the winter, warm and still fat from all the grass and clover they ate through the summer and fall. They’ll emerge again in January sometime, lean as whips and faster than lightning as they follow the drive to make new life again. 

Christmas is coming, and all is well in the cottage on South Downs.

* * *

  
  


Christmas Eve arrives, and even before luncheon the house smells delightfully of cinnamon and cloves and fresh molasses. Crowley waddles around in a thick woollen roll-neck and the most despicable pair of yoga leggings—a gift from Colette, and the likes of which are a sin on sheer principle but perhaps the most comfortable things he’s ever worn in his life, damn them.

There are gifts wrapped up and tucked under the tree, and stockings hung by the fire with care. It’s a right picturesque little scene for a demon and an angel cohabiting under the same roof, but Crowley enjoys it. He warns Eden that if she doesn’t brush her teeth after eating sweets that Father Christmas may only give her toothpaste and coal in her stocking, and that’s the full extent of his fatherly wiling, as far as he’s concerned. 

Late that afternoon, just on the cusp of nightfall, they’re standing in the kitchen icing gingerbread with Eden when Crowley makes a strange face, squeezes half of the icing sugar out of his piping bag at once, swears a single foul word, and then looks down as a puddle of clear fluid pools around his feet.

“Daddy, that’s ten pence in the swear jar,” Eden says, peering down at the odd mess before going back to adding buttons to her gingerbread man. 

“What’s wrong?” Aziraphale asks from across the counter, even though deep down he already seems to know the answer. 

“You stay right here and keep dressing up these poor, nudist gingerbread men,” Crowley says, slightly strained but still quite calm, before walking around the counter and taking Aziraphale by the elbow. “Papa is going to help Daddy tidy up right quick.” 

In the study with the door mostly shut, Crowley’s calm resolve splinters into a thousand pieces.

“It’s too bloody soon,” he hisses, gone a little bit wild-eyed. He’s a little over eight months along and the babies would be perfectly healthy and viable if born early at this stage, but his fisted hands are shaking anyway. “They can’t come on _Christmas_ , of all infernal days. I refuse, angel—do you hear me? I’ll suck them back in on layaway if I have to.” 

Aziraphale winces and miracles away the mess on the floor in the kitchen with a pointed thought. “He does have a bizarre sense of humor, doesn’t He?” he says lightly, trying to turn down some of the fraught tension in the air around them. 

And then, watching the expression on Crowley’s face go unchanged: “Oh, dear. Maybe we ought to pack Eden’s overnight bag and call Madame Edith.” 

Several hours later, when contractions have genuinely set in and Crowley is pacing the narrow attic hallway in his slippers and dressing gown, it seems they’re really in it for the long run.

“If three wise men show up with pad thai and an urn of frankincense I’m going to ki— _ah!_ ” Crowley hisses, bending at the waist to grip his knees. “I can’t believe this load of complete and utter _shite_.”

“I’m sure this isn’t some elaborate joke at your expense, darling,” Aziraphale tries, rubbing soothing circles into the demon’s lower back. “Babies are born prematurely quite often. It’s just rather, uhm...ironic, I suppose, that ours decided to choose tonight to make their grand debut.” 

“I must be some laughing stock,” Crowley laments, straightening again to resume his slow, hassled pacing. “An elaborate joke? No, I’m the butt-end of an entire sodding comedy special.”

Aziraphale closes his eyes, briefly, and sends up a quick prayer for patience. He’d nearly wilted with relief when Edith had shown up within a half-hour to collect Eden once they’d called, on Christmas Eve of all days. He’d known even then that this was going to be a storm he and Crowley needed to weather on their own.

“From my perspective, this is simply a serendipitous event of cosmic solidarity,” Aziraphale says. “Not that you particularly care right now, but I think it’s worth noting that Christ wasn’t even truly born on December 25th—that’s simply when the wise men arrived by camel to bring their tidings of joy and honor, as we both well remember.” 

“It’s the principle of the thing, angel,” Crowley grits out as he braces against the wall to swivel his hips some in place. “There’s 365 days in a blessed year, and they had to choose _this_ one.”

There’s sweat beading on Crowley’s brow, and soon he’ll probably need to strip out of his dressing gown for something lighter, but for now Aziraphale thinks they need to head this off at the pass before one night turns into an eternity. 

“Listen to me, Crowley,” he says firmly, waiting until two golden eyes swivel over to peer at him. “Whether you like it or not, these babies are coming tonight, and there’s nothing to be done about it short of truly divine intervention. So either you’re going to batten up and let them come along as calmly as possible, or we’re going to have to text Christ the Son on his ruddy mobile and ask for a great big do-over. Is that what you want?”

Crowley narrows his eyes into slits and lets out a heaving huff of a sigh. “No, it’s not what I want,” he mumbles. “Jesus is the last person I need meddling around with my bits under separation of church and state, you prat.” 

“There’s your answer, then,” Aziraphale says, raising his brows. “We’re going to do this, together, and have these babies whenever they decide to come. With nothing but peace and love in our hearts, because they don’t deserve to come into this world amidst any stripe of conflict or chaos.” 

“You’re not the one pushing two eight-pound bowling balls out of your hind end, but sure, peaceful and calm,” Crowley says, even if he does sound slightly more subdued now. “I’m the pinnacle of serenity.” 

“Good,” Aziraphale says, passing another small blessing into his husband when he rests a hand against his lower back again. “Let’s get you into something you can breathe in, dear. I have a feeling this may happen a touch faster than it did the first time.” 

There are only three hours left until midnight, and Crowley scowls but comes along to the bedroom as Aziraphale bids him. “Let’s bloody hope,” he says, unfastening the sash on his dressing gown as he goes. 

* * *

Five minutes until midnight finds Crowley settled back in the old clawfoot tub, submerged in warm water up to his chest but with no babies in sight. Aziraphale watches as another contraction ripples through him, and if he wasn’t looking for the cords of tension pulling in his husband’s neck and shoulders he wouldn’t have been any wiser.

“They’re only a few minutes apart now,” Aziraphale says, glancing down at his pocket watch before hooking it back on his waistcoat. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m about to give birth to a blue whale, quite imminently,” Crowley says, shifting some in the water as he tries to get comfortable to no real avail. He makes a miserable sound that makes Aziraphale’s heart ache, and then looks over at the angel with a queer sort of look on his face. 

“You’re too far away,” Crowley says, sad and mournful, which is a far cry from the hissing and spitting he was doing when they first started this process several long hours ago. “You know we both fit in here just fine.” 

Aziraphale blinks at that but tries not to falter. “I didn’t think you’d want me touching you too much right now,” he says, which is entirely true. “Are you sure you’ll be comfortable—?” 

“ _Yes_ ,” Crowley says, voice tightening again. “Just—get in behind me, angel, before I change my mind.” 

Aziraphale undresses quickly but with care, folding his clothes on the vanity and leaving his watch and chain nestled on top. He’s still in his underthings as he gently helps Crowley lean forward into the bath before stepping into the water and settling down at his back. 

“Much better,” Crowley says, immediately leaning into his husband’s embrace. He grips Aziraphale’s thighs and squeezes a bit as another wave of pain moves through him, but otherwise seems calm, content to let the angel sweep some of the flyaway curls back from his face. 

Crowley’s breathing changes a few minutes later, gone a bit shallower as he groans and makes some low, ancient sound deep in his chest. “Angel,” he hisses, panting some with effort. “I think this is it.” 

“Breathe, darling, just keep up with your breathing,” Aziraphale says, pressing soothing fingers around the lowest part of Crowley’s taut belly. “In and out, deep and easy. Let your body work.”

It’s been Christmas Day for a good bit now, but there’s no use in remarking upon it. Aziraphale wasn’t expecting how doubly humbling it’d be, feeling the power and strength literally move through Crowley’s body as he bears down on unspoken instinct. He goes rigid from the top of his head to the base of his spine at the peak of a contraction, and they both sense it when something moves into place, perfectly aligned for what comes next.

“Oh, Satan,” Crowley huffs, sinking back against Aziraphale again. “We’re having another baby.”

“You’re only now realizing that?” Aziraphale murmurs, smiling gently. 

“ _Two_ babies,” Crowley corrects himself, reaching up to pass a hand over his eyes. “Unbelievable.”

Aziraphale slips his hand beneath the water, two careful fingers pressing low between Crowley’s thighs without shame. He gasps softly when he feels it—the soft, pliant crown of a newborn’s head, already with a full swath of hair. 

The angel smiles, reaching up to link his fingers with Crowley’s there on the swell of his husband’s belly before dragging them back beneath the water so they can feel the baby together. 

“They’re on their way,” he whispers, pressing a kiss at the hinge of Crowley’s jaw. “You’re doing so beautifully, darling.” 

Crowley gulps a bit shallowly but nods, breath hitching at the edges. “I didn’t need to reach down there for a cheeky feel-around to know I’m about to push this child out of my bits, thank you kindly,” he rasps, but then his throat tightens and he leans more fully back into Aziraphale, seeking closeness as if they aren’t already pressed together in the bath. 

“I’m glad you’re here with me, angel,” he chokes out, breathing gone ragged again. 

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the entire universe,” Aziraphale says, and then holds Crowley’s hands as his body contracts again. 

It all happens relatively quickly from that point. Crowley makes a strangled sound, and then one of utmost, blissful relief—breath leaving him in a joyous gasp as he reaches down and pulls a wee babe up onto his belly, for a few shining moments the newest little thing in the whole wide world.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Stalin,” Crowley pants, eyes closed as he holds their tiny son close and pats him gently until the child lets out a small cry. “Tell me why I thought this was a good idea.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispers, eyes gone wide.

“Let me catch my breath, angel, we’ve only just hit the halfway marker.”

“Crowley, darling,” the angel says, more urgently this time. _“Look._ ”

When Crowley opens his eyes again and pulls his senses back into working order, he sees that the baby has two tiny wings sprouting between his shoulders, damp and wrinkled like a new butterfly’s. They’re dark and oddly shimmering despite the bathwater, like they’ve been dipped in fine dust scraped off precious emeralds and sapphires.

“Oh,” Crowley croaks, swallowing thickly as hot tears threaten behind his eyes. His hands shake as he touches the delicate little wings, cradling the newborn to his chest and kissing the baby’s head. “You can _fly_. My little winged bird, how wonderful and special you are.” 

Aziraphale blearily smiles and holds them both, reaching up with one hand to thumb at the salty wetness on Crowley’s cheek. He’s overwhelmed with the kind of gratitude that makes his grace tremble and hum inside his corporation, but he still thinks that of all the world’s riches and treasures and lost tomes, a demon’s tears of happiness are the most priceless things he’s ever known. 

“You’ve done it again, my love,” he murmurs, kissing behind Crowley’s ear. “Perfect in every way.” 

Crowley sniffles some, gently turning the baby in his arms so they can see their child’s little face, still slightly mushed and with a vague look of consternation about All This Business to do with being born. 

“Bet you say that to all the boys,” he says, though he reaches back with his free hand once the baby’s nuzzled against his chest to touch the side of the angel’s face. “Hold tight, this was only the first act of the night.”

Indeed, there’s still one more baby to go—a fact neither of them have forgotten. Their son is still tethered to his father by the umbilical, but as the baby continues nursing Crowley makes soft noises of discomfort low in his chest as contractions begin again. 

“I just realized I don’t know how to do this twice in a row,” he confesses, leaning more heavily back into Aziraphale’s arms again. “What do I do with this one? Hold onto him like a football and just run pell-mell for the 100 yard line?” 

“I don’t watch American football, dear, but I suppose so,” Aziraphale intones, shifting slightly in the bath. “Do you want me to take him…?” 

“No, not yet,” Crowley says, suddenly gone back into that place of focus and quiet, and just a few moments later the afterbirth passes. He stares at it with his lip curled, then seems to draw his legs back up again and ready himself anew the next part. “Right,” he says, once they’ve tied off the baby’s navel. “Two babies. 100 yard line. Let’s fucking do it.” 

Despite having already birthed two child-like beings before, Crowley’s corporation takes its dear sweet time with bringing their third-born into the world. He breathes, and counts, and breathes, and counts some more. The night wears on in a timeless lull and their baby sleeps against him, swaddled now in a nappy and gauzy blanket manifested into being that keeps his tiny wings tucked in. 

Crowley feels it when the second child shifts inside him, the telltale heaviness resting there in the low cradle of his hips like a trembling new star just at the cusp of switching on its light. 

“Oh, there you are,” he rasps, grunting with some effort. It’s impossible to get comfortable now, here on the final zenith, but he draws the dozing baby up higher against his chest and says, mildly, “Angel, take him for me please.”

When Aziraphale has stepped out of the bath and is cradling their child in his arms, Crowley rises up onto his knees again, then slowly pulls himself into a squat by holding on to the porcelain side of the tub. Damp flyaway curls frame his face and his amber eyes shine like buffed gold in the low light as he concentrates. 

Aziraphale stares at him, mesmerized, and doesn’t know if he’s ever seen anything or anyone look more beautiful and hell-bent with undiluted determination at the same time in all his millenia on the planet. 

“Crowley,” he says, carefully tucking the baby into a woven Moses basket there not far from the heating vent before turning back to his husband, kneeling down there in front of him. “I love you. So very much.” 

“I know, angel,” Crowley says, bowing his head against Aziraphale’s shoulder as the whole line of his body tenses and his stomach contracts. When it passes, briefly, he sags there and rocks back and forth on his heels, face tucked somewhere between his angel’s neck and ear. “If this is a game of bloody thrones, I think I love you more, considering the special flavor of hell I intentionally keep putting myself through.” 

When Aziraphale’s face falls at that, Crowley shakes his head and grips onto his husband’s forearms. “Don’t be daft,” he grunts, even as a new pain strikes up inside him again. “I’m not even finished with this one and I already know I’d do it all again.” 

Aziraphale only shakes his own head, blinking against the wetness in his eyes. He reaches down and holds the swell of Crowley’s belly, and in turn Crowley holds onto him. The demon makes a sound between a sob and a laugh, trembling some with the effort of bearing down, and they both count the silent seconds until it passes. 

“I want you to catch, this time,” Crowley says with some effort, still gripping Aziraphale’s arms as he balances in the clawfoot bath. “I can’t always be the first at everything, y’know.” 

“Catch?” Aziraphale asks, voice and heart high in his throat as he feels the muscles in Crowley’s abdomen tighten under his hands again. “Are you sure—?” 

“Never been more sure of anything, angel,” Crowley says, panting gently as he takes one of Aziraphale’s hands and brings it lower to where their baby is. “Don’t pinch out on me now, she’s almost here.” 

_She_ , Aziraphale repeats silently to himself, and then knows it to be true. Crowley’s body clenches like a wrathful fist and he cradles his child’s head in the palm of his hand a moment later, so suddenly. It punches the breath from his lungs, but all he can do is smile until it hurts. 

“Oh, here she is,” he says, swiping a thumb over the crown of the baby’s head while Crowley breathes out a relieved sound. “Almost there, darling. You’re nearly finished now.” 

They simply stay pressed together like that, in the most precariously intimate position, waiting for their third child here in the wee hours of Christmas morning. Aziraphale wonders, briefly, if the birth of their children marks a place of hallowed ground on the earth. 

“I’m so tired,” Crowley sighs, corporation shaking with the exertion of bringing new life into the world. He’s in the brief lull between contractions, hanging by a thread between being the father of two and then three. “Talk to me, angel. ‘Bout anything.”

“Hold onto me and don’t let go,” Aziraphale says, already knowing the next push will be the last. “I’m here with you. We’re here in our little home, tucked between the hills on South Downs. Eden will be so excited when she wakes up in the morning and has a new brother and sister along with her presents, don’t you think?” 

“I hope she loves them,” Crowley says, wearily. “I hope we made the right choice.” 

“She will,” Aziraphale says, feeling the tension begin to wind up in his husband’s body once more. “How could she not? You made them especially for her.”

“S’pose I’m just that good,” Crowley rasps just before he bears down again, and then a moment later Aziraphale is helping guide their daughter’s tiny shoulders through, and not long after that he’s pulling her the rest of the way into the light.

He carefully draws the baby from the water and gazes into her eyes like they’ve known each other for eternity—and perhaps, in some way, they have. Without looking he can feel the little wings sprouting at her back, like damp silk against his skin.

The girl patiently waits for her daddy to sink down and sit so he can hold her for the first time. Crowley takes the newborn into his arms, and Aziraphale doesn’t bother with wiping the tears off his own face.

“You came with wings, too, didn’t you,” Crowley murmurs, gently touching the fragile and wet goose-down things between the baby’s shoulders, paler than her brother’s and colored like fire opal. She blinks and then lets out a feeble cry, just enough to let them know she’s breathing well. “Look at you, my perfect little star.”

Aziraphale helps Crowley recline in the bath, blessing the water warm and clean again. He sits there on the floor, wonderfully exhausted himself in a way he can’t possibly begin to describe, and draws the Moses basket over where their son is still sleeping peacefully in his swaddling.

The little boy is dry and warm, a tiny shock of dandelion-fine hair on his head. Aziraphale tiredly manifests one of Miss Edith’s crochet hats into his right hand and tucks it over the baby’s ears to help him stay cozy, then looks toward Crowley and their daughter again.

“Merry Christmas, dear,” he whispers, leaning in for a kiss. “I think I’ve gotten everything I asked for.”

“Joy to the fuckin’ world, eh,” Crowley says, reverently tracing around their daughter’s tiny ears as she nurses away, quiet and safe in his arms. “And to all a good bloody night.”

* * *

  


By the time they’re all four tucked into bed in the loft, there’s only a few short hours left before the rest of England will be waking up for Christmas morning.

Crowley eats a bowl of porridge with berries and cream with gusto, gazing down at the swaddled infant resting along the seam of his outstretched legs. His body has mostly righted itself since they left the bath and he stepped into his silk briefs and one of Aziraphale’s soft cotton button-ups, but it may take another miracle or two from the angel before he’s back up to full working order. 

For now, Aziraphale rests against a pile of pillows on his side of the bed, holding their daughter up high against his shoulder as he pats her back, waiting for a tiny burp. The cottage is silent around them, insulated by the fresh snow piled up outside across the Downs.

“What do we want to name these children,” Crowley says around a mouthful of raspberries. “I still hold that Syrah isn’t all that bad, honestly.” 

Aziraphale thinks for a long moment, pausing his burping technique to reach up and blearily wipe around one eye. “You’ve already done it, by and large,” he says, smiling over at Crowley. “You don’t even remember.”

“What’re you on about?” Crowley says, pointing his spoon. “I didn’t do any such thing.” 

“You did,” Aziraphale says, finally earning a tiny burp from their daughter. He turns his face toward her and kisses her temple, breathing in the sweet smell of a newborn. “Bird and star. The moment you saw them.” 

Crowley’s mouth drops open at that as if he wants to argue, but then it clicks shut again. He looks down at the baby sleeping on his legs and then sets his bowl of porridge aside. “Well, we can’t just call them _bird_ and _star_ ,” he snorts. “I’m not some kind of Gwyneth Paltrow floozy, now am I?” 

“Very well, then,” Aziraphale says around a wide yawn. “Jay, Raven, Lark, Robin, Sparrow. Maybe Peregrine, if you’re feeling especially feisty.” 

“What are those wee little things that flit about the garden and lay their eggs in the flower pots,” Crowley says, reaching down to rest a hand against their son. “You know the ones I’m talking about.” 

“Wrens,” Aziraphale says, and then clears his throat to try it on for size again. “Wren.” 

“Perfect, that’s one down,” Crowley says, snapping his fingers. “Now for my little star.” 

The word is tumbling over Aziraphale’s lips before he could even think to catch it. “Estelle,” he says, like it’s the only answer in the world. The baby stirs against him and sighs in what might be agreement. 

“Estelle,” Crowley says thoughtfully, and then nods. “Look how easy that was, angel. We could do this for a living.”

“We’re technically in retirement, dear, when you think about it,” Aziraphale says, standing to settle Estelle down in her bassinet before going around to take Wren into his arms and do the same. 

“If retirement is nothing but shagging you and naming babies, then I’m all in,” Crowley says, his own jaw cracking around a wide yawn. “Pretty soon we’ll be like the Von Trapp family around here, eh? Four more mouths to feed and a dog whistle to do the trick.” 

“Have I ever mentioned you’re completely insufferable,” Aziraphale snorts, though he leans over and kisses his husband on top of the head for good measure, too, before going to crawl back into bed. “I think we ought to raise up the handful we’ve got before you start getting any more bright ideas.

Outside, the first dregs of dawn are beginning to brew like weak tea on the horizon. Aziraphale pulls Crowley into his arms and sleeps the hardest he’s slept since time unraveled and the world began.  
  


* * *

  


Edith rings them by nine o’clock the next morning, barely containing the eagerness in her voice. 

“When I didn’t hear from you, I assumed things were going along at a pretty decent clip,” she says, and then draws in a tight breath. “You must be exhausted. Is Anthony alright? And your new little ones? Eden has been talking my ear off about it since the moment she woke up.”

“We have a new son and daughter, both perfectly healthy and wonderful,” Aziraphale says graciously, looking over at where Crowley is propped in bed with a crumpet in one hand and Wren nestled in the crook over his other arm, suckling away happily. “You can bring Eden home to meet them whenever you’d like,” he says. “Though I’m sure she’s a bit more excited to open her presents from Father Christmas.”

It doesn’t take long for the sound of their firstborn stomping up the stairs to grace the sound of the loft. 

“Ah, the dulcet tones of a toddler on a mission,” Crowley says, and then his whole face brightens when Eden pokes her head into the room, shortly followed by a winded Miss Edith bringing up the rear.

“There’s my big girl,” he says, holding out his free arm to hug Eden against his side. He and Eden both turn to look at tiny baby Estelle, who has replaced her brother in Crowley’s arms for her late morning breakfast. His shirt is open and undone down one shoulder, but he doesn’t bother to fix it even as Edith peeks around Aziraphale in the doorway with a tiny wave.

“What’s she doing, Daddy?” Eden asks, grey eyes wide in wonder. “She’s very small.”

“Well, love, this is typically how wee babies get food when they’re very small,” Crowley says. “You used to get your nosh like this when you were this size, you know.”

“Not _me_ ,” Eden stresses, shaking her head. “I use a big girl cup now.”

Crowley laughs and Eden goes over to where Aziraphale is showing Wren off to Miss Edith, who coos and compliments his tiny hat before bidding them goodbye for the time being, promising to pop back in later if they need any help. 

When she’s gone, Aziraphale sits on the side of the bed and carefully unwraps Wren’s swaddling. “Come see, Eden,” he says, supporting the baby’s head as he tips him up enough for her to see the little wings at his back. “What do you think of that?” 

“They have wings, too!” Eden halfway shouts in excitement, and then claps her tiny hands over her mouth. “Sorry, Papa. Inside voices.” 

“Would you like to hold him?” Aziraphale asks, patting the bed beside him. “Come here and I’ll set this pillow in your lap. You have to be very still and careful, like when the kittens were small. Do you remember what I told you?” 

“Yes,” Eden says decidedly, clambering up onto the bed with a pinch of difficulty in her thick jumper over top of her dungarees. “My turn, now.”

Once her brother is settled on the pillow across her little legs, Eden cranes over and peers into his tiny face, expression one of the purest awe. She touches one of his small hands and then cranes around to look at his wings again as Aziraphale supports him with both hands. 

“Can I touch them?” she whispers, blinking as the baby grunts and makes a tiny noise. 

“Very gently,” Aziraphale says, and the whole room seems cast over with a spell of something magical as Eden carefully prods around the delicate wing joints, and then touches the wispy beginnings of feathers. 

“He’s very pretty,” she says, looking up at her parents. “Just like a baby angel.” 

Crowley’s face cracks into a cheeky smile at that, busy doing up his shirt with one arm. “What an excellent observation, love,” he says, sharing a look with Aziraphale over the top of her head. “You just might be right. Well—halfway right, depending on who you ask.” 

“Now, let’s not get too hasty,” Aziraphale tuts, busying himself with wrapping baby Wren back up in his swaddling. “That’s going to be a long conversation for another day, which certainly isn’t anytime soon.”

“You’re no fun,” Crowley says, still patting Estelle’s back. “Well, shall we open our gifts from Father Christmas? Or would you rather leave them wrapped up for next year.”

Eden squeaks in excitement and tears off down the stairs as fast as her little feet will carry her, which isn’t as fast as she’d like, but quickly enough for Aziraphale to make an alarmed sound and scoot after her in his slippers, holding onto the baby for dear life. 

“Are you coming, dear?” Aziraphale’s voice floats back up the stairs a few moments later. “Or would you like us to bring Father Christmas back up to you?” 

Crowley winces a bit as he swings his legs over the side of the bed, but it’s easy enough for him to get on his feet and hold his newest little one close, curled up safe and sound under his chin. He’s still drained from the night before, but the contentment and satisfaction to be found in this singular moment alone could power him for the next century, he supposes. Perhaps even longer than that.

“I’m on my way,” the demon says, shuffling into his own slippers and heading for the doorway. He kisses Estelle on her soft hair, just because he can, and follows the smells and sounds of Christmas morning down the stairs to where his little family is waiting for him to join them.

Once Father Christmas’s presents have been opened and there’s nothing but the carnage of wrapping paper and ribbon left in Eden’s wake, she scampers off with Muffy in one hand and a new pop-up book in the other, promising to feed the kitties before she gets too deep into storytime.  
  
Aziraphale and Crowley are still on the settee, holding a sleeping twin apiece, looking slightly bedraggled but nonetheless happy. They share a weary look, and Crowley leans over to simply rest his head on the angel’s shoulder for a moment.  
  
“Well, that went well,” he murmurs, smiling as Aziraphale tips his head over in kind so they’re leaning on each other in front of the Christmas tree and the crackling hearth. “She seems pleased.”  
  
“I think ‘pleased’ would be an understatement, darling, but all the same,” Aziraphale agrees. “Now comes the difficult part of getting her to refrain from telling all of South England that her little brother and sister came out with wings.”

Crowley shrugs, reaching up to press a gentle hand over Estelle’s back where he knows her little wings are safe, tucked beneath her swaddling. “She’s only three and a half,” he says. “If she slips up and says something, people will just shake their head and laugh. Kids will be kids, all that usual talk.”  
  
Aziraphale sighs and closes his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitches. “I suppose you’re right,” he says, and then waves his hand with a lazy flourish toward the mess in the floor so it disappears from existence. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, though, haven’t we.”  
  
“If we didn’t, it wouldn’t be you and me,” Crowley answers, and then looks up as there’s a small knock at the door. “D’you suppose that’s Edith come back ‘round?” 

Aziraphale makes as if to get up with Wren to go see, but Crowley still beats him to it. He holds his daughter up high on his shoulder, eyes narrowed as he cracks open the door for a peek. There’s nobody there on the front walk or lingering by the gate, and for an instantaneous moment he’s afraid—until, after a few seconds of rapid heartbeat, he sees the brown paper bag and wrapped gift there on the doormat. 

Aziraphale is at Crowley’s shoulder before he can open his mouth to remark on it, brow creased as they both stand there staring at the parcels like they may burst into flames at any given moment. 

Then, after a beat, Aziraphale sniffs the air and says, “Do you smell...curry?”  
  
Back inside with the babies tucked safely in their basket, Crowley opens the paper bag and pulls out three steaming takeout containers of perfectly edible coconut curry, chicken satay skewers, and Pad Thai. He pulls out the last box, peers inside, and snorts.  
  
“White rice,” he confirms, and then nods toward the wrapped present. “Let’s see what’s in that one.”  
  
Aziraphale pulls the silver ribbon loose and then uses his thumbs to pop the sellotape until he can shake the shiny paper loose, revealing a plain brown gift box. When the lid comes off, Crowley watches as he reaches inside and pulls a bundle of incense sticks and a rather large glass candle out. A small slip of paper, thin enough to see the light through, drops from where it was stuck to the candle and flutters to the floor.  
  
Crowley stoops to retrieve it with a small sound of exertion, then brings it up for a proper look.  
  
“ _Three wise men are hard to come by on short notice_ ,” he reads aloud, “ _but there’s always a Thai restaurant and metaphysical shop open somewhere in London. Congratulations, and Merry Christmas. Your friend, -JC_.”  
  
“Oh, how thoughtful of him!” Aziraphale says with a boisterous laugh, offering the opened candle to Crowley for a sniff. “Here’s your frankincense and myrrh, as requested.”

Crowley is silent for a long, tense moment, and then merely shakes his head. “Damn him,” he says, without any real heat to it at all. “The flash bastard.”

“I thought that was your title, dear,” Aziraphale says knowingly, already going to fetch three bowls and some cutlery from the cabinet. “Eden! We’re having Thai for Christmas luncheon, love.”  
  
Crowley settles down in a chair at the table and looks over at where Wren and Estelle are tucked together in their basket, curled together like new puppies. 

“He can bloody have it,” he says with a sniff, though there’s no mistaking the glint of something warm shining in two golden eyes. “I think I’m perfectly happy to stay in retirement.”   
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to see a very sweet and tender moment with Crowley and Aziraphale in the bath with new baby Wren (safe for work), Yakichou1 on twitter kindly illustrated this for me: https://twitter.com/honkforhankcon/status/1361316248529883136


End file.
